


Serendipity

by oschun



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: M/M, Sibling Incest, mentions of past physical abuse by a parent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-05
Updated: 2011-08-05
Packaged: 2017-10-22 06:02:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oschun/pseuds/oschun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are two things that Jensen knows inescapably to be true: his illness defines him and his father made him the man that he is. But the problem is that Jensen doesn’t actually understand the real truth of either of those things. In an attempt to escape his troubled past, he leaves home to meet up with an old school friend in New Orleans and ends up making a discovery which challenges all his preconceptions about his childhood, his own identity, and the distinction between myth and reality. Serendipity happens like that - unexpectedly. (Inspired by Val Lewton’s original 1942 movie <i>Cat People</i> and Paul Schrader’s 1982 remake of the same title.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Serendipity

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Supernatural J-squared Big Bang challenge. Thanks to the charming chemm80 for her beta skills and advice and to the talented mementis for her beautiful graphics and kickass soundtrack.  
>  **Link to art:** [Art Post](http://mementis.livejournal.com/86369.html)  
>  **Link to soundtrack:** [Soundtrack Post](http://mementis.livejournal.com/86814.html)  
> 
> 
>   
> 

Part One  
Jensen stepped off the plane and was met by a solid wall of sweltering humidity. Sweat began to prickle in his hairline and collect in the small of his back as excitement sparked in his stomach. He was here, finally. The flight from Dallas to New Orleans had taken less than two hours but it felt as if he had travelled across the world, had severed himself from his past and was now stepping into the unknown.

At the age of twenty four, Jensen had never been on a plane, never even left his home state of Texas. He was excited and terrified.

Some of that excitement dulled and was replaced by a sense of unease when the crowd of passengers around the baggage carousel thinned and disappeared and he was the only one left waiting. He wasn’t quite sure what to do and looked around uncertainly.

Eventually the flight number vanished from the board above the carousel and he gave up on the hope that his duffel would appear on the conveyor belt. Shouldering the backpack he’d carried with him on the plane, he made his way towards the concourse to find the information desk for American Airlines.

This happened all the time in airports, Jensen told himself. Luggage got mislaid or lost (or sometimes accidentally sent to Taiwan, another little voice interjected in his head).

Everything Jensen owned was in that bag, but it wasn’t as if anything besides his medication actually mattered to him.

On cue his watch beeped him a reminder.

 _Time to take your pills, Jensen._

The voice-echo was a familiar accompaniment to his watch’s alarm. Jensen’s stomach tightened nervously. He wasn’t supposed to be here, not this far away from the safety of home. His father would have been angry and disappointed.

A shiver of fear ran up his spine, even though there was nothing to be afraid of anymore. Fate–in the form of an exhausted long-haul driver and an eighteen wheeler drifting across the centerline–had made sure of that. His father wasn’t around anymore to be angry and disappointed. Jensen was free.

Guilt started gnawing at him. In his own way, his dad had cared for him, tried to do what was best for him. It wasn’t right to feel relieved that he was gone.

 _Time to take your pills, Jensen._

Routines were important. It was a lesson that had been instilled in him from when he was little. Once, at the age of about ten, he was late taking his medicine so his dad tied him to a kitchen chair and made him count out loud every second of the ticking clock for a full hour. There were three thousand and six hundred seconds in an hour. Jensen hadn’t known that.

He stopped at a vending machine to buy a bottle of water and looked in the backpack for his travel pill container, but couldn’t see it. He packed it into the side-pocket last night, remembered doing it, but it definitely wasn’t there anymore. It must have slipped out.

Rummaging around in the backpack proved to be pointless, so he sat down and searched it thoroughly, eventually tipping the contents out on the seat next to him and carefully going through everything again, item by item, feeling increasingly nervous. A woman sitting opposite gave him a wary look, got up and walked away.

It made no sense. How could he have forgotten his pills? It was out of the question. Impossible. Jensen sat there, dumbfounded. He could feel a familiar hard ball of fear forming in his stomach. He should never have left home. This is what happens when you don’t do what you’re supposed to. You get punished. He’s not supposed to be out here, out in the world. His father was right.

Self-reproach was a conditioned response. Jensen knew that. It took a huge effort to talk himself down. _Stay calm and think clearly. You’re not being punished. You haven’t done anything wrong._

He took a couple of deep breaths and tried to concentrate on slowing down his racing heart.

He needed his duffel bag. It was a simple error. That was all. It was sitting somewhere safe just waiting for him to pick up. Everything was going to be okay.

 _Get up, Jensen._

He found the airline desk and the woman working there pointed him to another desk where he could report that his luggage had been lost. She was really nice and smiled at him apologetically, and Jensen remained calm, holding on to the belief that everything was going to work out fine. He tried to ignore the tell-tale signs of a headache starting at his temples. The symptoms were always so immediate. There was a window of maybe an hour before the real pain and dizziness set in.

Jensen joined the long, slow-moving queue at the other desk.

Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

When he finally got to the front, the woman behind the counter was a whole lot less nice and less apologetic. Jensen imagined that she got tired of angry, demanding people. She radiated an air of _I just work here, buddy._

Jensen was ordinarily a very polite person and he sympathized with the fact that his lost luggage was not her fault, but his head was starting to pound and fear was churning in his stomach. She clearly did not understand the importance of his predicament.

“I can’t leave my phone number and the address of where I’m staying. I’ve explained this to you. There’s something very important in my bag that I need right now. You have to find it.”

“Sir,” she said, sounding slightly irritated, but mostly just bored, “I’ve logged it into the computer system and we will do everything we can, as quickly as we can, to locate your luggage. Please step aside.”

“No, I’m not going anywhere.” Jensen’s voice rose. “Can you at least tell me how long I’ll need to wait?”

The woman’s expression soured. “If you don’t step back from the counter, Sir, I’ll have to alert security.”

“Listen, jackass, you’ve had your turn. We’re all waiting here,” an irritated voice complained behind him.

Desperate, Jensen leaned forward and pleaded with her. “Please, you don’t understand. I’m sick. My medication is in that bag and I need it right now. It’s very important.”

She frowned and looked at him closely. Jensen imagined that his face was probably drained of color and that he was sweating profusely. He could feel it. “Do you need medical assistance?” she asked him, a note of concern and humanity creeping into her voice and expression.

 _It’s not allowed and they can’t help me anyway,_ Jensen wanted to shout at her. Doctors, hospitals, medical professionals of any kind were to be avoided at all costs. That had been drilled into him as far back as Jensen could remember. He was starting to feel dizzy.

“Is there a problem here, Dolores?” A tough-looking security guard appeared at Jensen’s elbow and kept cool, assessing eyes on him as Dolores explained the situation. Jensen considered making a run for it. This was getting out of hand. People in uniforms made him nervous.

The guard unclipped a two-way radio from his belt. “Let me radio the first aid office.”

“No!” Jensen said quickly and unconsciously clutched his arm to prevent him from pulling out his radio. The guard frowned, raised his eyebrows and looked pointedly at Jensen’s hand.

Jensen gave him a shaky smile, let go and tried to pull himself together. He needed to get away from these people. “I’m fine. Just tired after my flight, I guess. I’m going to get a cup of coffee or something.” He turned to the woman behind the desk. “Please can you contact someone and tell them that this is really urgent. I need you to find my bag. I’ll come back in a little while.”

Jensen turned away and headed towards the other side of the concourse. His vision was starting to blur but he could still vaguely make out a coffee shop ahead of him. His glasses were irritating him so he took them off. They were making no difference to what he could see or not see anyway. He was pretty sure that Dolores and the beefy security guard were staring suspiciously after him.

The coffee shop was empty except for two men sitting at a table near the entrance as Jensen walked in. Both of them looked up. The man facing Jensen was middle-aged and powerfully built. The other was young and good-looking in profile, with high cheekbones and a pointed nose, longish dark hair curling into the nape of his neck.

Jensen tried to appear normal and casual as he walked past their table but his spatial awareness was all out of whack and he managed to bump the younger guy with the backpack slung over his arm. “Sorry,” he muttered and stumbled a little. The guy turned quickly in his seat and gripped Jensen’s elbow to support him.

It was the strangest thing, but it felt as if a jolt of heat passed from his hand into Jensen’s arm.

Jensen thought he’d imagined it, a feverish product of his medication-starved brain, but the other guy seemed to feel it too. He jerked his hand away with a startled expression. Nostrils flaring, he looked up at Jensen like he was breathing in some subtle scent emanating from his body. He frowned and looked unsure.

“Are you looking for us, brother?”

That made absolutely no sense so Jensen ignored it, mumbled another apology and weaved his way towards the counter.

Everything was being amped up, the light too bright and sounds around him too loud. Jesus, he thought, I’ve come all this way and I’m not even going to make it out of the airport.

He managed to get to the counter and asked, “Can I – can I have a black coffee?” He squinted at the various cakes and pastries dancing around in front of his eyes. “And, uh, one of those muffin things.” He pointed in what he hoped was the direction of the one he wanted. He hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast this morning. Maybe something in his stomach would make him feel better. The girl behind the counter gave him a strange look.

Paying for the coffee and muffin turned out to be a really complicated procedure because his hands were shaking like a Parkinson’s sufferer.

“Are you feeling alright?” the girl asked, sweeping up the coins he’d spilled across the counter.

“I’m fine,” Jensen replied and wiped his sleeve across his sweating forehead.

He got to a table, miraculously only spilling half of the coffee into the saucer, collapsed into a chair and went through the pointless task of searching his backpack again for the travel pill container. I’m going to die, he thought half-hysterically. I’m going to die in an airport in front of strangers. I’m never going to do any of the things I dreamed of. I’ve led such a little life, never seen or done anything, never been anywhere.

You’re not going to die, Jensen, he reproached himself, attempting to gain control over that part of him where fear lived and ruled absolutely. You’re going to drink this coffee and eat this muffin and then you’re going to go back to the lost luggage desk and Dolores is going to be there waiting with a smile and your duffel and you’re going to hug her and she’ll laugh and then you’re going to take your medicine and everything’s going to be just fine.

Vaguely reassured, Jensen drank some of the coffee. It tasted awful. Burnt and bitter. He bit into the muffin and almost retched at its sugary sweetness. Pushing the cup and plate away from him, he started drumming his fingers on the table. How much time had gone by? He squinted at his watch. Was it too early to go back? Probably, he decided. Give it another ten minutes. Rat-a-tat-tat, his fingers drummed over and over on the table.

An alarming thought suddenly crossed his mind. What if his duffel bag hadn’t passed through security? What if they’d found the other medicine bottles and had assumed that he was smuggling illegal drugs? Technically, Jensen supposed, that’s exactly what the pills were.

For various reasons, vaguely alluded to by his father and Doctor Fischer, the medicine that Jensen had been taking for his illness since he was a kid would never have been approved by the FDA, so it had to remain a secret.

Learning how to keep secrets–and the repercussions if he didn’t–formed some of Jensen’s earliest memories.

And of course the pills were stolen too. But it wasn’t as if Doctor Fischer would have reported that. Jensen knew he should feel some guilt over the admission that he was a thief, but he didn’t. Doctor Fischer would never have voluntarily given him the drugs, would never have allowed him to leave home.

Doctor Fischer was an old army friend of his dad’s. For reasons never explained to Jensen, he was stripped of his medical qualifications and fired from a research job up north, despite that he was a gifted immunologist. So he had moved to middle-of-nowhere, Texas and become a recluse. Some people don’t understand genius, Jensen’s dad told him once.

His dad allowed Doctor Fischer to experiment on him when he first got sick as a little kid. Jensen didn’t remember any of that. He had virtually no memories from before the age of about five or six. The other doctors couldn’t discover what was wrong with him and if it hadn’t been for Doctor Fischer, who created a combination of chemical compounds that didn’t cure his disease but at least alleviated the symptoms, he would have died.

His father stressed this many times over when Jensen was growing up. But it was hard to feel gratitude towards a man who viewed you as a medical experiment rather than a frightened kid.

After his dad’s funeral, his desperate desire to leave home turned into an obsession. Jensen had wanted to beg Doctor Fischer to let him have just a six-month supply of the drugs, but he knew what his response would have been. Doctor Fischer had always looked at him as if he was less than human, but after his dad’s death that lack of feeling became even more pronounced. The past few weeks, Jensen would sometimes catch him wearing this strange calculating expression that quickly disappeared as soon as their eyes met. It was unnerving.

All Jensen had wanted was six months, a chance to come out to New Orleans to catch up with Steve, the one childhood friend he’d had the guts to keep in contact with despite his dad’s opposition. Surely he was allowed that. Why was this happening to him?

His self-pity was interrupted by the sudden realization that something very weird was going on with his eyesight. He was losing peripheral vision and could only see in a tunnel in front of him, had to turn his head if he wanted to look to the side. Color seemed to be leaching out of everything around him in the coffee shop and Jensen realized that he was pretty much viewing the world in muted tones of grey.

He was so busy considering this that he wasn’t fully registering what it was that he was looking at. It took him a couple of seconds to realize that he was staring at the two men at the other table, and that they were openly staring back at him.

He flushed and dropped his eyes. And that was when things got really scary. His heart started to contract in his chest as if in the grip of a hard fist. Pins and needles crawled across his skin. His lungs tightened and he found that he couldn’t draw a full breath, only shallow, hyperventilating gasps that made him even more dizzy and disoriented.

Jesus, I’m having a heart attack, he thought, desperately clutching his chest.

He wasn’t aware that he’d slumped forward until he was pushed back into the chair. Strong, hot hands on his shoulders held him upright and the face of the younger man from the other table swam into view. He really was very handsome, Jensen decided.

“What’s wrong, brother? Are you sick?”

That word again. Jensen tried to reply but a whimper of pain came out instead. His traitorous ribcage was attempting to crush his heart and lungs, and while his heart bravely struggled to keep beating, it felt like a losing battle.

A white mist clouded over his eyes and Jensen realized that he was going to pass out. He tried to communicate that to the man in front of him but his tongue refused to cooperate. Incapable of holding on any longer, he let go. His body went limp and heavy. Everything started to fade away.

He could hear the two men talking but couldn’t make out the words. Then he was hazily aware that he was being lifted, his arms flung over hard shoulders, a strong grip around his waist as he was hauled to his feet. He could hear other raised voices. Then they went away.

The world disappeared into the darkness. When he came back from it, Jensen was aware that he was lying on the backseat of a moving car. It smelled like new leather. He knew that the younger man from the coffee shop was in the car too because Jensen could smell him. Something wild and intoxicating and achingly familiar about that scent.

The darkness rose up and claimed him again and the dreams followed. Terrible, frightening dreams.

Jensen dreamed that his bones were breaking. All of them. They were cracking and reforming into new shapes. Something internal, biological. His skin remained whole and complete but everything was changing and rearranging on the inside. It was agonizing and he screamed.

Someone stroked his hair back from his forehead and murmured words of comfort.

There’s someone else here, he thought, or rather out there, outside the dream.

“Jensen?”

The person was calling his name.

“Jensen, can you hear me?” the voice came again.

“Yes,” Jensen whispered back, his voice rough and rasping.

“My name’s Jared.”

“Jared,” Jensen echoed.

“You’re safe here, Jensen.”

“Safe,” Jensen echoed.

“I’m going to take care of you. You’re going to be alright.”

Jensen tried to concentrate on the voice but the darkness was overwhelming. He sank back into it, meeting it like an old accustomed friend. And the fire followed it.

He was burning, flames licking at his skin and the burning was more agonizing than the breaking. He couldn’t scream because his mouth was filled with fire. It burned its way down the channel of his throat, spread into his chest, into his veins, a rushing network of molten, fiery blood throughout his body.

Outside the dream someone was soothing his burning skin with something soft and cold. Jared. It wasn’t working, though, because the fire was on the inside. Jensen tried to tell him. Tried to tell him that there was no point, that he should give up, that it wasn’t going to be alright.

Jensen could hear other voices and could smell the mingled scents of other people outside the dream. There were lots of hands on him and he was afraid.

 _Don’t let them hurt me, Jared._

Awareness arrived in a shock of light and activity. He was being carried. Jared and the other man from the coffee shop had him in a two-man lift, both of them so strong. There was a woman too. Soft voice and lilting accent to the instructions she was giving to the two men.

“Carry him carefully and lower him slowly. The ice will be a shock to his system.”

Ice? No. No. Ice was punishment. Jensen remembered that. Ice was for freezing feelings that were too hot. Feelings that came from down there. Jensen with his hand working in his pants, everything hot and hard, a slow ascent, the peak and release. His father walking into his bedroom and catching him. His rage so much worse than anything Jensen had ever provoked in him before. The worst sin. Sick and dirty and dangerous.

His dad was untying him from the bed and carrying him to the bathroom. Jensen knew that the bath was filled with icy water, had watched his dad fill it with bucket after bucket of ice from the industrial freezer outside.

“No, Daddy, no. Please, I’ll be good, I promise. I won’t do it again, I promise. Please.”

He started to struggle, frightened and desperate.

“Jensen, we’re not trying to hurt you. Jensen, can you hear me?”

Jensen stopped struggling and looked into troubled hazel eyes. So pretty. Jared.

“You have a fever and we need to lower your body temperature. It’s really important. Nobody here wants to hurt you, I promise. Trust me.”

“Where’s my dad?” Jensen asked.

“Not here,” Jared replied.

“Burning in hell,” the woman muttered.

“I’m so hot, Jared. I’m on fire.”

“I know. That’s why we need to cool you down. Hold my hand. I won’t leave you.”

Jensen was lowered gently into the bath. The cold took his breath away and he started thrashing about, sloshing water over the side and all over the bathroom floor.

“Jensen, look at me. It’s okay. Just lie back.”

Jensen listened and trusted, subsiding into the coldness and allowing it to engulf him. The icy water worked like frosty magic, moving slowly from the outside inwards. The fire in his veins calmed and cooled and disappeared. He dreamed about being buried naked in soft snow, somebody lying next to him and holding his hand, his forehead close and touching, his cool, sweet breath tickling Jensen’s lips.

***  
The first thing Jensen became conscious of was the late afternoon sunlight shining from the window on the other side of the room. It was bright and dazzling and hurt his eyes. The second thing was the man lying next to him on the bed, watching him.

“Is the light too bright?”

Jensen nodded and the man got up to pull the curtains. A ceiling fan swished round and round and round. It was cool and shadowy with the curtains closed.

Jared came back and lay down next to him again. Jared. Jensen tried the name out in his head, the sounds and the meaning of it.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“You’re in my home. We’re a few miles outside of New Orleans.”

“How did I get here?”

“You were at the airport. You were very sick so we brought you here.”

“There was another man with you.”

“Marko.”

“He carried me into the house?”

Jared smiled. “Yes, he’s very strong.”

“Why didn’t you take me to the hospital?”

“You don’t like hospitals.”

It was such a simple and blindingly true statement that Jensen didn’t question how Jared knew that. He stretched his arms above his head and groaned at the ache in his muscles. “Everything hurts.”

“I know,” Jared replied sympathetically and stroked the inside of Jensen’s arm. A line of heat lit up under his trailing fingers.

Jensen flinched away. “That burns.”

Jared clenched his hand shut. “Sorry.” He got up again and poured a glass of water from a jug on the table next to the bed. “Here,” he handed the glass to Jensen, “you need to drink something. You’ve been feverish.”

“I need my bag and my medicine.”

“You don’t need to worry about that right now.”

Jensen was too tired to worry about anything and Jared sounded so sure. He was weak and the glass felt heavy in his hand. Some of the water spilled on the bed cover and he wiped it away with shaky fingers. The fabric of the cover was soft and velvety, a rich profusion of dark colors. He looked around him. The bed was an enormous four-poster. The furniture was dark and antique. An oil painting of a black leopard with yellow, watching eyes hung on the wall across from him.

“I don’t think this is real,” he said. “I’m dreaming.”

Jared smiled, his face lighting up with humor. “Drink the water, Jensen.”

Jensen did, gulping it down thirstily. Jared took the glass from him when he was done and placed it on the bedside table. He turned back to face Jensen, fluffed the pillow and put his head down. “You should get some sleep.” His eyes glittered in the half-light.

“I am very tired,” Jensen agreed drowsily, comforted by the knowledge that Jared was going to stay with him, his eyelids growing heavy. “You have strange and beautiful eyes,” he said as sleep started to overtake him. “Like a cat.”

***  
Jensen woke up hungry. Actually, he was absolutely starving, famished, ravenous. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d been this hungry. It was that impatient hunger from childhood. Waiting for dinner had always felt like eons.

His skin was hot and his head hurt. Pulling himself up against the headboard drew attention to his aching muscles and overly sensitive skin, the numbness in his legs. Jensen was aware that the mattress was probably really comfortable and that the sheets were soft, but that’s not the way they felt against his skin. Everything hurt, felt rough and abrasive.

He got up and made his way to the adjoining bathroom by inching his way around the bed and leaning against the wall for support. His legs were weak and shaky. He peed and then splashed cold water on his face at the basin, grimacing at his pale reflection in the mirror.

He was out of breath when he collapsed back into the bed. He pulled the covers up to cover his nudity, felt too hot and kicked them off again, but then quickly yanked them back up when Jared walked into the room with a tray in his hand.

“It’s a bit late for modesty, don’t you think?”

Flashes of Jared running a cool, wet cloth all over his naked body and holding his hand when he was frightened returned to him. Jensen blushed. “I thought I’d dreamed you up.”

“No, I’m definitely very real.”

Jared pulled up a chair and Jensen allowed himself to study Jared’s averted profile as he arranged the tray on the bedside table. His expression didn’t give anything away but his hands trembled slightly, as if he was nervous about something.

Jared caught him looking and a strange, electrifying quiver of energy passed between them. Before Jensen could look away, Jared picked up Jensen’s hand and placed it against his chest. “See, warm and alive, not a dream. I’m right here, Jensen.” He was holding Jensen’s hand really tight, like he was scared he might try to get away, staring at him like he couldn’t quite believe that Jensen himself wasn’t a dream.

It was unnerving being the focus of so much concentrated attention. Jensen could feel the racing rhythm of Jared’s heart against his hand. His palm started to heat up and he jerked his hand away.

Jared grimaced. “Sorry, that will go away eventually. It’s because—” He made a gesture with his hand that seemed to encompass both of them in some invisible, magical circle. He shook his head, apparently at a loss for words, a look of amazement widening his eyes.

Jensen couldn’t fathom what he had done to draw such an intense reaction from a complete stranger.

Eventually Jared dropped his gaze and looked at Jensen’s arm. Jensen followed his eyes and saw a pinprick puncture mark and some faint bruising in the bend of his elbow.

“We took a blood test.”

Panic, anger and something that felt like betrayal warred for dominance. “You took blood from me without my permission when I was half conscious? How dare you?” Jensen struggled to sit up, wanted to jump out of the bed and face Jared standing up, but he was too weak.

Jared placed his hand, hot and firm, on Jensen’s chest and held him down. “I’m sorry you’re angry, Jensen, but you don’t need to be. I wouldn’t hurt or betray you. I just needed to know.” He stroked Jensen’s cheek. “You can trust me.”

Jensen pushed his hand away. “Stop touching me like that. I don’t even know you. And how did you find out my name?”

“You told me.” An unsure expression flickered across Jared’s face. “Don’t you like it when I touch you?” He sounded anxious to hear Jensen’s answer.

Jensen kept expecting to look down and see a red handprint on his chest where Jared had pushed him back down. “It burns my skin when you touch me.”

For some reason his answer seemed to please Jared. “Are you hungry?”

“Starving,” Jensen admitted and eyed the covered plate on the tray, hunger momentarily overriding everything else.

Jared smiled, smug and knowing, as he lifted the lid off the plate with a flourish to reveal possibly the largest steak that Jensen had ever seen in his life. And Jensen came from Texas - he’d seen some monster cuts of beef before. It was at least an inch and a half thick and covered the entire plate. Spices coated the outside and it was seared a rich, dark brown.

Jensen’s stomach growled and his mouth started watering.

Jared was watching him. “Want some?”

Jensen couldn’t tear his eyes away from the steak. He nodded. Jared picked up the knife and fork and sliced into it. Blood leaked out onto the plate. It was so rare that the flesh was still purple on the inside.

Jensen’s stomach turned and he wrinkled his nose. “I don’t normally eat meat that rare.”

Raw might have been a better word.

Jared looked unconvinced. A small smile was playing on his lips. “I’ve been told that I cook a very good steak. The secret is in the coating of spices. Can you smell how good it smells?”

Jensen could smell cayenne, paprika and herbs.

“I sear it really quickly in a smoking hot skillet. A couple of seconds on each side. The juices and flavors get sealed inside so that when you bite into it, you can taste the animal exactly as it’s meant to taste. This was an eighteen-month-old steer that fed on open, green pastures on a farm owned by a family who are the sixth continuous generation to live on the land.”

“Did he have a name, this happy, little steer?”

Jared’s lips twitched. “Is that sarcasm, Jensen? I guess you must be feeling better.”

Jensen lowered his eyes, embarrassed. He didn’t normally talk so easily and openly to people.

But he was feeling better. Despite the lingering headache, sensitivity of his skin and weakness in his legs, he felt oddly okay, especially considering how long he had probably gone without taking his medicine. Growing up, Jensen had been conditioned to believe that the results of not taking his pills would be instant and catastrophic. And yet here he was, alive and functioning. His eyesight seemed really clear too. Normally, his first reaction when he woke up was to reach for his glasses, but everything around him was in sharp, clear focus.

“Do you know what happened to my backpack? I had it with me at the airport.”

Jared looked guarded as he replied, “No, I don’t. Everything was a little chaotic. I’ll contact the airport and find out if anybody picked it up.” He looked at the steak and raised his eyebrows questioningly. “So are you going to brave it?”

Jensen couldn’t back down from the challenge in his voice. “Okay.”

Jared brought the forkful of meat up to Jensen’s mouth. “Open up.”

It was probably the best thing that Jensen had ever tasted. Soft and moist and meaty and delicious. He sighed with pleasure and briefly closed his eyes to concentrate on the taste. The herbs and spices complemented the beef perfectly, adding just the right amount of heat and flavor.

Jared was grinning when Jensen opened his eyes. “It’s good, right?”

Jensen nodded and licked his lips, slightly embarrassed by his display of uninhibited pleasure. “It’s delicious,” he admitted.

Jared’s smile faded and a darker, more serious look settled on his face as his eyes dropped to Jensen’s mouth. “Want some more?”

That look caused something to tighten in Jensen’s chest. He nodded, not sure that he could trust his voice. There was something strange and intense happening here, something that he didn’t quite understand.

Jared cut another piece of the steak and brought it up to Jensen’s mouth. That he was quite capable of feeding himself didn’t even cross Jensen’s mind. He opened his mouth and accepted the offering and closed his eyes again as he chewed. The meat was sloppy with blood. He sucked at it and his senses flooded with sensation. This had been a living creature, breathing and vital, its life-force contained in the blood and muscle that Jensen was now absorbing into himself.

Jensen remembered where he was and his eyes flicked open. Jared was staring intently at him, his eyes narrowed and heavy-lidded. A trick of the light made them appear tawny and translucent for a second. Jensen’s breath got stuck in his throat. Jared didn’t say anything, just cut another piece of the steak and fed him again.

Jensen kept his eyes open, even though they wanted to close in bliss as Jared continued feeding him. The room was silent except for the sounds of their breathing and Jensen’s chewing and swallowing. Jared was staring at him like he was trying to memorize every detail of his face.

Jensen’s body suffused with warmth. He could feel it rising up his chest and into his face. Strangely, Jared had a matching flush along his cheekbones.

The sound of the cutlery clattering on the plate broke the spell woven around them. Jensen looked at the empty plate with surprise and blushed with embarrassment. “I guess I was hungrier than I thought,” he said, smiling awkwardly.

Jared didn’t return the smile; instead he leaned forward and rubbed his thumb along Jensen’s bottom lip.

“Did I dribble?” Jensen could feel that he was blushing furiously. It only added to his embarrassment. Then to make everything so much worse, Jared ran his eyes down Jensen’s body and paused half way down.

Jensen thought that he was going to spontaneously combust from humiliation because there, quite obviously under the sheet, was the hard evidence that he was turned on.

Before Jensen could say anything, Jared leaned forward and pressed their lips together. Jensen was too astounded to do anything for a moment except hold his breath. Jared licked at his mouth, tongue hot and moist, tasting the lingering traces of the spicy steak. He ran his tongue along Jensen’s bottom lip, making him gasp, and allowing him to press inside, intimate and invasive. Jensen forgot to breathe again and his entire body flushed with heat.

He wasn’t aware that he had brought his hand up to grip the back of Jared’s head until Jared moaned. He realized that he was twisting his fingers in Jared’s hair and clumsily clutching him closer.

Jared had been leaning over him with his hands either side of Jensen’s shoulders, but when Jensen’s fingers twisted in his hair, he shifted fully on to the bed and covered Jensen’s body with his. Their legs tangled together.

Waves of heat began an ebb and flow through Jensen’s body and his chest grew tight. Pins and needles started prickling their way down his arms and legs. Tension turned into full-blown anxiety when he became aware of the hard length of Jared’s erection pressing against him, the shallow thrusts of his hips that caused fire to build up in Jensen’s groin. He tried to shift away but Jared was so big and tall and overwhelmingly heavy.

Oblivious, Jared cradled his head and used his thumb to lift Jensen’s jaw so that he could get better access to his mouth. His breathing was heavy and ragged as he bit at Jensen’s lips. He moved his head and nuzzled Jensen’s cheek, murmuring incomprehensible things.

“I never gave up. Never. I knew you’d come back. I’ve missed you so much. You’re safe now.”

A red fog descended over Jensen’s mind and his ears started ringing. His arms and legs felt numb and lifeless. He tried to sit up but it was as if his body didn’t belong to him anymore. His lips refused to move, his tongue thick and heavy and sleeping in his mouth.

 _Jared, let go. Get off. You’re hurting me._

Jared sat up quickly. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry, Jensen. I’m so sorry.” His voice was high with tension.

Jensen’s vision was almost completely blurred. He could make out the wavering shape of Jared, his movements, as if he was looking at him through murky water. He heard shouting and thought that it might be coming from his own mouth without his volition until he heard the words.

“Irena! Irena! Irena!”

He lost all sense of awareness until he felt somebody lifting his head, insistently pressing a glass of cold, bitter liquid that smelled unfamiliar to his lips. He swallowed automatically and felt the liquid flow into his stomach. The pain and numbness receded. Tiredness took its place.

A woman started singing. He didn’t really understand the words but the tune was familiar, something sad and old, something about loss and remembrance.

When Jensen was a little boy, mothers always seemed to be these faraway, elusive creatures that other kids either vilified or eulogized. There seemed no in-between with mothers. But in his own imagination, mothers were always about warmth and scent. They smelled like clothes that had just been taken off the washing line in summer, like your favorite meal, like flowers.

He was surrounded by that scent.

Jensen fell asleep, feeling safe and happy, and had his favorite dream about his mom coming to save him from his dad’s anger.

Part Two  
Jensen woke up to the sight of a red sky cradled in the big, stretching branches of a dark tree. Some of the branches hung downwards and flicked from side to side as if alive. He blinked and tried to focus. Shapes along the branches grew and panted with life and turned into big, black cats with yellow eyes and long, hanging tails.

“Do you want me to read you a story?”

Jared was lying next to him, his head propped up against the ornately carved headboard of the bed, feet crossed, a big, heavy book on his lap. The illustration on the page facing Jensen glowed with life and stark color. The black cats looked questioningly back at him. Would you like to hear our story, Jensen? they seemed to ask.

I’d like to wake up and know where I am, know who I am, Jensen was going to say, until he realized it was partly a lie.

Sometimes, when he was younger, he used to wake up, and feeling the disappointment of being awake, he would close his eyes again and just for a few minutes–while he could sleepily maintain the illusion–he would pretend that he was someone else waking up to a different life somewhere else.

There were worse things than waking up to this handsome, watchful stranger offering to read him a story. Much worse things.

“I’m thirsty.”

Jared put the book aside, got up and poured him a glass of water.

Jensen wiggled his toes and felt strangely disconnected from their movement beneath the covers. “And I’m really tired of this numbness in my legs.”

Jared made an abortive little gesture as if he wanted to rub some life into Jensen’s dead legs, realized what he was doing and pulled back sharply, biting his bottom lip. “I’m sorry about before. Touching you like that. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” He sighed, lay back down and stretched his hand out again, leaving it open and vulnerable, like an apology between them.

Jensen noticed how sallow Jared’s skin was, how dark the circles were around his eyes. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. Jensen reached out and lightly stroked that open palm, felt the little blisters of heat forming under his fingertips at the touch of Jared’s skin.

Jared smiled ruefully at his pained expression and that made it worth it.

Some semblance of rational thought tried to cut its way through the lassitude that seemed to have taken hold of Jensen’s body and brain. He needed to get up, to do something. “I should call the airport. My luggage got lost.”

“I know, you said that before.” Jared’s expression became cool and shuttered. “I contacted the airline. They’ll send your duffel bag and backpack here as soon as they find them.”

There were a hundred other important, pragmatic things that needed dealing with. Questions which needed asking, some sense made of everything, all this confusion cleared up.

But somehow none of that did seem very important. Jensen felt like he was in a dream where explanations and things-making-sense no longer applied or were necessary. All that mattered was this. This bed, this man who looked at him like he knew and understood him. Jensen didn’t know where he was or how long he had been here. He had no medicine, no clothes or belongings, and yet he wasn’t afraid. Everything felt safe and dangerous, strange and familiar, all at the same time.

“What’s the story about?” he asked, ignoring everything else he should have said.

Jared smiled, dimples creasing his cheeks and making him look young and happy. Jensen’s heart contracted in the most absurd way in response.

“Do you like history?”

“Sure.” Jensen had a feeling that Jared could make the reading of an instruction manual sound fascinating.

Jared opened the book and stared at the page for a couple of seconds, then closed it again and chewed his bottom lip as if he was considering something. He turned over on to his side. “What’s wrong with you? Why do you take medication?”

A lock of hair fell across Jared’s forehead and Jensen had to clench his hand to stop himself from smoothing it back. “I have a rare and incurable autoimmune disorder,” he said quietly, considering the planes and angles of Jared’s face, the feline slant of his eyes, the curve of his bottom lip.

Jared gave him a long look. “I see. Why are you afraid of hospitals? Shouldn’t we take you to a doctor? Do you have a prescription? I can go into New Orleans and get it for you.”

“It’s complicated.”

“I’m pretty smart. Why don’t you explain it to me?”

It was impossible to lie. “There’s a doctor back home in Texas who formulated the drug that I take. It isn’t legal. He saved my life when I was a kid. I’m not supposed to tell anybody. I never have before.”

“I see,” Jared said again. “What kind of doctor is he?”

“An immunologist.”

“Really?”

Jared’s voice sounded cool and neutral, but Jensen heard the undertone of disbelief.

“What? Are you’re judging me? That’s not really your place, Jared. You don’t know anything about me or my disease.”

Jared’s jaw clenched. “Do you?”

“What does that mean?”

“What is it called, this _disease_ that you have? What are the symptoms, the causes?”

“I told you. It’s very rare. I don’t think it has a name. And you’ve seen the symptoms: fever, dizziness, headaches, joint pain, loss of orientation, mental confusion, night terrors.”

“I see.”

“Stop saying that.”

Jared sighed and stroked the cover of the book lying on the bed between them. It was a hard-back, leather bound, with strange symbols printed into the cover.

“Jensen, your blood is full of chemicals that suppress the natural functions of your body. Most of this,” he ran his eyes down Jensen’s body, “is your immune system trying to rid itself of the poison you’ve been taking for so long. It’s trying to correct itself. The people you trust have been lying to you.”

Jensen rubbed the needle puncture in his arm. It seemed to grow and harden under his fingers, became a scar, a permanent reminder of everything that was wrong with him. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. And you had no right to take blood from me.”

“You don’t need to worry about anybody finding out. The blood test was done secretly. We know doctors too.”

“Who is _we_? Why do you keep talking in riddles?”

“I don’t mean to. I’m sorry. Where is your –” Jared paused and clenched his jaw again. “Where’s your dad, Jensen?”

Answering a question with a question was just another way for Jared to keep him lost in a maze of confusion. Jensen didn’t respond.

“Please tell me.”

“He died.”

There was so much left unsaid in that sentence: he was killed in a road accident driving back from some business he had in Dallas (or that’s what he said when he left) and he was so secretive, so careful to keep himself off the official radar that it took five days for me to find out. Five days alone, not knowing what to do and afraid to tell anyone because that wasn’t allowed. They didn’t even have any record of me. I might as well have never existed. I’m a ghost.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know you don’t mean that. The stuff I was saying about him when I was feverish. I remember some of it. That wasn’t how it was all of the time.”

“I do mean it. I’m sorry that you were alone. I understand your grief, even though I don’t think he deserves to be mourned.”

Jensen thought about his dad’s physical presence, the force field of strength, the threats and lies that had always surrounded him, and the loss of it. He tried to wiggle his toes again. “Have you heard of Munchausen by proxy syndrome?”

“Yes.”

“I looked it up once, secretly, when I was at school.”

It seemed like such a long time ago. Jensen had almost forgotten about it, that he had ever thought in that way, that he had questioned his illness.

“Of course it didn’t fit. It wasn’t like I was being kept sick. I was fine, healthy, but I used to wonder sometimes whether I really had to take the medicine, if it was as life-or-death necessary as my dad and Doctor Fischer made out. I used to think – I don’t know – It doesn’t make any sense but –” He shook his head, struggling to express it in words and unwilling to try any harder to explain himself.

Jared nodded as if Jensen had said something that made sense. “Did you ever try to run away?”

“Once, but my dad was really good at tracking people down. He was in the military before and really smart with stuff like that.”

That was another memory Jensen preferred not to drag up. The punishment for that betrayal of his dad’s trust had been days and nights in the dark without food and water.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I’m tired. If you’re going to read me this historical epic, you need to do it soon or I’m going to fall asleep.”

Jared smiled, slow and sad, no humor in his eyes. He flicked the sheet over Jensen’s hand and squeezed it tight in his own big, warm hand. The thin cotton barrier protected Jensen from the incendiary effect of his touch.

Jared squeezed his hand a second time and then opened the book again, cleared his throat and started to read.

“Long ago, when humankind was still new and naked and had faith in nature and magic, the people sacrificed their children to the leopards.”

His voice was low, warm and rhythmic. The words sounded practiced and familiar, like a favorite story from childhood.

“The cats were gods then. They were cruel deities, bloodthirsty and demanding, and their fierce hunger could not be sated. They swallowed and swallowed until the souls of the sacrificed children blossomed inside them. The leopards felt the beauty and sadness of possessing a soul, stood up on two legs and became human, taking their place alongside their human brothers and sisters. They lived with them, loved them, longed to consummate their desire for them, but were cursed to remain apart and to hide their true identities because of their past cruelty. So the cat people are a secretive, incestuous race. If they attempt to mate with a human being –”

“Uh, Jared?”

“Yeah?”

“I thought you said this was a history book?”

“It is. It’s the history of the ailuranthropes, the cat people.”

“Jared, history is General Custer or Napoleon Bonaparte or the Boston Tea Party. Stuff like that. I’m pretty sure this is called folklore.”

Jared closed the book and turned over onto his side. “Do you believe in serendipity?”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It’s like providence or fate. It’s when something absolutely perfect happens, something that is meant to be, but when you’re not actually looking for it, by accident, when you’re looking the other way for something else. A perfect confluence of events.”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

Jared suddenly sat up and looked towards the door. He cocked his head slightly as if he was listening for something.

“What?”

“Somebody has arrived downstairs,” Jared answered, standing up. “I’ll be back in a minute.” He started grinning. “You should probably prepare yourself.”

And with that enigmatic remark he left the room.

Jensen watched him go, bemused. He turned the book over, opened it and looked at the illustration he had woken up to, stroked it with the tip of his finger, the sky red and glossy, the dark shapes in the trees strangely warm and velvety.

His attention was pulled away from the mesmerizing picture by the sound of voices and the clattering of heels outside the door. He smelled perfume and his senses prickled.

“Where is he? Stop telling me to calm down. Where the hell is he?” a female voice demanded. Jensen sensed her pausing outside the door, even imagined that he could hear her heart beating.

The door burst open and a young woman strode into the room. She was beautiful and tall, with long, dark hair covering her shoulders. And she looked just like Jared, like some female version of him, all wide mouth and cheekbones and long legs. She came to an abrupt stop when she saw Jensen, breathing quickly, as if she had been running.

Jensen blinked, not sure that he wasn’t imagining her, blinked again when she leaped, nimble as a gymnast, from a couple of feet away onto the bed. Jensen shrank backwards, mouth open in surprise and watched her as she crawled up his body. Her hair spilled forward as she lowered her head. With flared nostrils, she sniffed up his chest and into his neck, his ear, down again and licked the pulse beating at the base of his throat.

Jensen lay very still, half-afraid and half-aroused at the wet heat of her breath, the feral scrape of her teeth.

“Is it really you?” She asked, sitting up and straddling him, her knees tight around his chest and hazel eyes wide with wonder.

Jensen met her gaze and was struck by the oddest desire to roll her over and nuzzle her. She seemed so familiar. He was flooded with feelings of affection and couldn’t help smiling.

She threw her head back and laughed, a wild and happy sound.

Jared had followed her into the room and was sitting on the bed next to them, watching, a smile tugging at his lips. Jared’s female counterpart climbed off him and tucked herself next to Jared, an arm around his waist. “It’s him, isn’t it?” she asked, looking up at Jared, who nodded, his eyes remaining on Jensen.

“Jesus, look at his mouth. His fucking freckles!” she exclaimed.

Both of them cocked their heads, a mirror image, considered Jensen’s face and smiled simultaneously as if they were delighted by what they saw.

Jensen was embarrassed by the combined weight of their stares. “Who do you think I am?”

“You are the moon and the stars, Jensen.” She grinned and started to crawl towards him across the bed, eyes glittering and intent. “And we are the black and hungry night. We’ve been so lost without you.” Jared grabbed her by the ankle and pulled her towards him. She rolled playfully onto her back and laughed.

Jared gave her a warning look, Jensen an apologetic one, but he looked amused.

She leaped to her feet and started jumping up and down on the bed like an excited child. A five foot ten excited child with long legs in skinny jeans. “We should have a party! A homecoming! There should be red balloons and gallons of cold champagne.”

Jared gripped her wrist and pulled her back down. “Simone, he’s not well. I told you. He’s in the midst of the change. He can barely stand up. You can’t—”

She kneeled in front of Jared and cupped his face. “Then we will have a picnic here in the bedroom. Just us and Irena and Marko. We can have cocktails and cake. And music! We can dance!”

She leaned forward and kissed Jared quickly on the mouth. Jensen saw the red of her tongue slide along Jared’s bottom lip. “And you will be happy because you deserve to be. Of all of us, you deserve it most.”  
She gave Jensen another awed look and left the room, loudly calling, “Irena! Irena!”  
Jared laughed at Jensen’s stunned look. “Sorry, she has that effect on people. Simone’s a force of nature.”

“She’s your sister?”

“Yes, my twin. I should probably go and check that she’s not destroying the kitchen or driving Irena crazy or possibly organizing a brass band from New Orleans. And you should rest. I’ve got a feeling that we’re not going to get out of having this picnic.”

An affectionate, reminiscent expression crossed his face. “She used to love midnight picnics in bed when she was little. It’s why I never got to sleep on my own. Her bed was always full of biscuit crumbs.”

Jensen felt a pang in his chest, a longing for midnight feasts and sharing a bed with a sibling who loved you.

Jared got up to go.

“Jared.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m not who you think I am.”

Jared’s lips quirked. He wore an expression that was becoming familiar. One that managed to blend genuine humor with cynicism and sadness.

“And who is that person, Jensen? You’re not who you think you are either.”

“That doesn’t even make any sense,” Jensen called after his silent, retreating back.

***  
Jensen dozed fitfully most of the afternoon and dreamed about picnics alongside a river. The sound of children’s laughter followed him into the waking world. Laughter outside the bedroom wove in and out of it so that he didn’t know what was real and what was the dream.

The sun was setting when he woke up, orange light filling the room and dusky shadows starting to collect in hidden places. The woman he remembered from before was sitting at his bedside reading the big, heavy book that told the history of the cat people. Her expression was serious and absorbed. A sleek, pointy-eared cat sat on her lap, seemingly interested in the book too.

She became aware of his scrutiny, looked over and smiled at him. “Hello, Jensen.”

“Hi,” Jensen said shyly.

“How are you feeling?”

Her voice was quiet, measured and soothing, tinged with the slightest East European accent. Her dark hair was threaded with silver and pulled back from her face.

“Better now, thank you,” he answered. “It’s Irena, right?”

She nodded. “I brought you some clothes.” She indicated a pile of folded clothing at the foot of the bed. “Jared would like to keep you naked, I think, but…”

Her smile widened when he blushed, an expression filled with knowing humor.

“Do you need help to go to the bathroom?”

Jensen shook his head. “I can manage, thanks. And thank you for the clothes.”

Flicking through the pages of the book, she asked, “Has Jared been reading this to you?”

“He started to.”

She smiled, closed the book and stroked the leather cover reverently. “Jared has always loved the old stories, ever since he was a boy. Heritage is important to him. Not like Simone, she only cares about the here and now.”

From his brief introduction to Simone, Jensen guessed that she was the kind of person who lived very much in the present. He nodded.

“What about you, Jensen? Do you believe in honoring the past?”

Something about her tone made Jensen think that she was asking him something else. “I think so,” he said uncertainly.

She smiled again but looked away from him as she did, amused by something he didn’t understand. “This book has been in my family for many generations. It has travelled a long way to be here. We all carry the past with us.” She looked at him and held his gaze. “But some of us are more defined by it than others. We are who and what we are because of what has come before.”

Whatever it was that she was attempting to communicate to him was completely lost on Jensen. She stood up before he could ask her to explain, the cat in her arms. “Don’t let Simone and Jared make you too tired. Tell them if you need to rest.” She put her hand on his forehead, feeling his temperature, and Jensen briefly closed his eyes. It was unfamiliar, this feeling of being cared for. His eyes prickled.

“We are so happy you are here, Jensen. All of us.” She gently stroked his cheek and reached into the pocket of her dress. “For you.” She smiled again and propped an old photograph against the water jug on the bedside table.

Once she’d left the room, Jensen picked up the photograph. It was taken beside a river. Three children were in the foreground with dirty knees and grass stains on their clothes. A taller, older boy with a thatch of blond hair and freckles scattered along the bridge of his nose was in the center, looking straight at the camera. Two dark-haired children, a boy and a girl, were either side of him and holding his hands. The girl was looking off to the side and appeared eager to pull away. In contrast, the little, dark-haired boy was pressed up so close to the blond boy that he was partly standing on his foot. His head was raised and there was an adoring expression on his face.

Jensen traced a finger across the photograph. He suddenly felt very light-headed.

A couple of deep breaths and he was able to shake it enough to make the decision to get up and take a shower. He left the photograph on the table, picked up the sweatpants and t-shirt that Irena had left for him and slowly made his way to the bathroom.

He had to lean unsteadily against the cold, tiled wall of the shower, trying, kind of ineffectually, to soap his body. It felt good, though, when he was done, to be clean and refreshed. He was wrapping a towel around his waist when the bathroom door burst open.

“Are you okay?” Jared demanded.

“Yes, Jared, I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? You look terrible.”

Jensen caught a glimpse of his pale, drawn face in the bathroom mirror. “Thanks.”

“You shouldn’t be standing up on your own. You could pass out or slip and fall. Come and lie down.”

“Jared,” Jensen said patiently. “Go away. I need a minute here.”

“Oh, okay. Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Okay,” Jared said again and just stood there. Jensen gave him an exasperated look and he raised his hands in defeat. “Alright, I’m going. I’ll be in the other room. Call me if you need my help.”

Jensen put on the sweatpants and t-shirt, sitting on the closed toilet lid and dressing slowly and carefully. There was a new toothbrush in its box in the holder and he brushed his teeth, taking pleasure in the clean, minty taste.

Jared and Simone were camped out on the bed when he went back into the bedroom. A table had been pulled up next to the bed and was laden with food. The room was filled with golden, suffused light coming from dozens of candles everywhere. Music was playing - 1920s jazz with a scratchy, raw, gramophone resonance.

Jensen paused, feeling like he’d accidentally stumbled into an old movie set.

Simone was in a black, figure-hugging, velvet dress, her legs and feet bare, a gold chain around one ankle, long legs stretched out in front of her. Jared lounged next to her against the mound of pillows piled up against the footboard, also dressed in midnight black. The whole thing was so staged, so obviously nostalgic and lazy.

Jared grinned at Jensen’s astonished expression. Simone frowned and looked upset. “You like it, don’t you?”

“Wow,” Jensen said, unsure what else to say.

Jared patted the bed. “Come and play,” he said with a predatory expression that did funny things to Jensen’s insides. “My sister likes dress up games. Let’s not disappoint her.”

If Jensen had been physically able, he might have made a run for it. The door looked really inviting and very, very far away.

Jared’s expression changed and he got up, a reassuring hand stretched out towards Jensen as if he was trying to calm a skittish animal. “Hey, I’m kidding, it’s okay. Come and sit down.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sakes,” Simone exclaimed when Jensen hesitated. She got up, pushed Jared aside, gripped Jensen by the elbow and propelled him towards the bed. She was surprisingly strong. Jensen ended up sprawled across the cushions stacked up against the headboard.

“Meekness doesn’t suit you,” she said angrily, clambering over him towards the table next to the bed. She grabbed a jug filled with amber-coloured liquid, ice cubes and mint leaves, poured it into a glass, swallowed it straight and refilled the glass.

“How would you know what suits me?” Jensen asked, surprising himself. “You don’t know anything about me.”

Simone looked at him with flashing eyes. “The mouse, he squeaks,” she said sarcastically.

A burst of laughter made them both turn to Jared, who was standing and watching them.

“What?” Simone demanded.

Jared laughed again. “Nothing. It’s just that the two of you could be argumentative, little kids.”

“It’s not funny, Jared.” Simone turned back to the table, picked up a wickedly sharp knife and stabbed it into an enormous chocolate cake covered in cream and strawberries and little pink marzipan roses. She hacked it up into slices, talking to herself. “This was supposed to be perfect and now it’s ruined, totally fucking ruined.”

Jared walked around the bed and sat next to her. He took the knife gently from her shaking hand and put his arm around her. At first she resisted his embrace, but then turned and burrowed her face into his neck.

Jensen watched them, wrapped up in their cloak of family and shared love that he was excluded from.

Simone lifted her head and her eyes were shining with tears. “What did they do to him?”

Jared murmured quiet words of comfort in her ear, excluding Jensen again. Simone turned and met Jared’s lips. They kissed, their mouths slightly open, wet and familiar, and something stirred inside Jensen.

“Do you want a drink?” Jared asked, turning to Jensen, his arm still around Simone, inviting him into their shared space. Jensen edged over and took the proffered glass and the three of them drank together.

“I’m sorry,” Simone said, tearful and penitent. “I didn’t mean to be a bitch. It’s okay to be scared.”

“I’m not scared.”

Confused, nervous and uneasy, maybe, but Jensen did not feel scared. Fear was something that he was intimately familiar with and this wasn’t it.

“Have some cake,” Simone offered. “I baked it myself.” Jared gave her a raised-eyebrow look. “Okay,” she rectified, “Jared and Irena might have helped just a little.”

Jensen couldn’t turn down the peace offering, even though he was slightly intimidated by the enormous wedge of cake. “Isn’t it usual to have dessert at the end of a meal, not as a starter?”

Jared laughed.

“Not tonight,” Simone replied. “Tonight we can do whatever we like.”

“You always do whatever you like,” Jared said.

Simone laughed. “That might be a little bit true.”

Jared and Simone settled against the cushions at the foot of the bed and Jensen lay back against a corresponding mound of cushions stacked against the headboard, like Turks facing each other in a harem.

Jared and Simone talked and Jensen mostly just listened. They kept the conversation light and general: movies, music, local politics.

This is how normal people who have real lives talk to each other, Jensen thought. People who have not grown up to believe that the outside world is an alien and threatening place. They were both so poised and self-assured. Nobody had ever taught them to fear anything, including what they were, their own natures.

 _Fear the enemy inside you, Jensen. That’s where the battle starts._

Jensen had never been allowed any alcohol—his dad always said that drunkenness made men behave like beasts—so after two glasses of the jug’s contents, he was feeling light-headed and euphoric. He was struck by the surreal beauty of everything, the honey-colored light in the room, the sleek, dark beauty and grace of Jared and Simone. Simone insisted on eating off both his and Jared’s plates and feeding them from hers. She was kittenish and affectionate, kept touching both of them. Jared was equally tactile; he returned Simone’s caresses, kept reaching out to Jensen and then jerking his hand back.

“Is it really that intense when he touches you?” Simone asked. When Jensen nodded, she leaned forward and wrapped her hands tightly around his forearm. “How about when I do?”

Her hands were unnaturally hot, Jensen had been aware of that since she first climbed all over him, but it didn’t scald in the way that Jared’s touch did. “It burns, but not in the same way.”

Simone pouted theatrically. “Well that’s fucking typical. I was always left out.”

“Never in your entire life have you ever been left out of anything, Simone,” Jared said to her.

Simone shrugged. “It’s ridiculously old-fashioned anyway. That kind of bonding only leads to unhappiness. It was like that for them, though, wasn’t it?”

Jared nodded, obviously knew who she meant.

“Who are you talking about?” Jensen asked.

“Our parents,” Jared answered after a long, silent pause.

“What happened to them?”

“They’re both dead now.”

Jensen wished he hadn’t asked. The mood in the room grew serious and sombre.

“Oh my god!” Simone suddenly exclaimed, picking something up from the floor. In her hand was the photograph that Irena had given to Jensen. “Where did you get this from?” She looked sideways at Jared. “Did you give it to him?”

Jared shook his head, his expression strange and unreadable.

“Irena gave it to me. I don’t know why. Who are they?”

Simone laughed, loud and clear as a bell. “Well, this adorable little girl, right here,” she said, pointing, “is me.” She laughed again. “It looks like I’m trying to run away.”

“You were probably distracted by the butterflies. There were so many, do you remember?” Jared said.

“Yes, I used to love butterflies. That was the year I decided I was going to be a lepidopterist. I collected all those pin cushions and stuck the butterflies into them with long sewing needles.”

“You kept them under your bed until mom found them and gave you that lecture about cruelty.”

“Yes, I was a really horrible kid. They would flap about for ages before they died.” Simone giggled.

Next, she tapped the little dark-haired boy in the photograph and smiled. “And this, of course, is Jared, in a typical pose too.”

There was another long and silent pause.

“Who’s the other boy?” Jensen asked.

“This is our older brother. He was stolen from us soon after this photograph was taken.”

Simone and Jared exchanged a glance.

“Stolen?” Jensen questioned, surprising himself with his own boldness.

“A man our father thought he could trust took him away from us. He destroyed everything.” Jared’s voice was harsh and bitter.

Simone sighed unhappily and stroked the photograph. “Let’s have another drink.” She quickly slipped the photograph under a pillow and then emptied the jug into their glasses.

Jensen tried to take the conversation in a different direction. “Is Irena a family friend?”

“Irena and Marko are guardians, silly,” Simone said, stirring the ice cubes in her glass with her finger. She paused, finger suspended in mid-stir, and glanced up quickly at Jared, looking at him with a coy and slightly guilty expression. She half-smiled and popped her finger into her mouth, obviously trying to stifle a laugh.

“What do you mean? They’re your guardians?”

Jared gave Simone a cool, unwavering look before answering Jensen’s question. “Yes, they’re like family. Irena and Marko have always lived with us.”

Simone said, “They didn’t come to the picnic because they thought we needed time together.”

Jared smiled. “Marko didn’t come because he thinks picnics in bed are undignified.”

Simone made a dismissive sound. “Marko thinks anything fun is undignified. Go downstairs and mix us another jug, Jared.”

Jared got up amenably. “Okay, but don’t do anything to freak him out while I’m not in the room.”

“I’m not that fragile, Jared. I can take care of myself.”

“See, Jensen trusts me.”

Jared looked unconvinced but took the jug and went out of the room anyway.

Simone sighed and looked at the door before turning to face Jensen. “Jared could have been so different. He has this real capacity for fun and happiness but he never got over the disappearance of our brother. It made him sad and serious too young. He carries a lot of responsibility as well, what with our parents’ financial interests and all that.” She waved an airy, dismissive hand. “Things I’ve never been interested in. A lot of people rely on him.”

She cuddled up close to Jensen. “But everything will be different now.” Wrapping her leg over one of his, she leaned up and nipped his ear, her teeth sharp. “Now we will all be happy again.” She laid her head down on Jensen’s shoulder and made a contented, purring sound.

Jensen patted her. A heavy weight of responsibility sat on his chest. He knew what was going on here, of course. They were trying to make him a substitute for the long lost brother in the photograph, that fierce little blond boy who stared straight into the camera lens, holding their hands tightly. But that wasn’t Jensen. That could never have been him.

“I’m going to pee.” Simone kissed him full on the mouth. She grinned and kissed him again quickly on the nose, scooted off the bed and made for the bathroom.

Jared frowned when he walked in and saw Jensen’s expression. He placed a jug jiggling with ice on the table and looked at Jensen with concern. “What did she say to you?”

Jensen forced a smile onto his face. “Nothing.”

Simone came back from the bathroom and leaped onto the bed from an impossible distance away. Jensen shook his head, sure he was imagining it, like he had before. There was no way that anybody could move like that. It was probably the alcohol confusing him.

“Simone used to do gymnastics. She’s very flexible.” Jared’s voice was tight and angry, his expression flinty.

Jensen felt like he was cataloguing Jared’s moods and expressions. This was a new one. Jared carried seriousness and sadness with him like it was something necessary but separate to him. At heart, he seemed boyish, warm and affable. But sometimes he projected something else, something darker, like he had earlier when he was talking about the disappearance of his brother. Jensen had a feeling that Jared’s anger was hidden deep inside him. It was intriguing. Jensen felt a little shiver of excitement.

Simone just laughed. “Oh dear, am I in trouble, Jared?” She pouted when Jared gave her a cool look. “I should go to bed. I can’t keep my mouth shut and I’m going to say something I shouldn’t. Anyway, Jeff will be back tomorrow, right?”

Jared nodded.

“I should get my beauty sleep then.” She kissed Jensen softly on the mouth. “Sleep tight, beautiful Jensen. I’ll see you in the morning.” She crawled over to Jared and climbed onto his lap. “And you, grumpy, don’t be so serious. Everything’s going to be okay now. I love you so much.” She kissed him on the forehead, hands wrapped around his head, then on the mouth.

Jared kissed her back, the flash of anger obviously forgotten. Again something stirred, hot and heavy, inside Jensen at the way Jared and Simone touched each other.

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence after Simone had left the room.

“Do you want me to leave too? I guess you’re tired, right?”

Invisible tension started stretching out tautly between them. A candle sparked and flickered, then another. The air in the room grew warmer and heavier.

“Not really.” Actually, Jensen felt very much awake and on edge.

Jared gave him a long, considering look as if he was weighing something up.

Jensen said, “We could have another drink, not let it go to waste.”

Jared looked from Jensen to the jug on the table and back again.

“What are you afraid of, Jared?”

Jensen felt as surprised as Jared looked. Did he really just say that?

Jared threw his head back and laughed. “I think meekness is a whole lot safer attitude for you, Jensen. But okay, let’s have another drink.” He poured the drinks and brushed his fingers against Jensen’s when he handed him the glass. The brief touch was hot and purposeful.

Jensen quickly swallowed half the contents.

“I’m surprised.”

“By what?”

“By how adaptable you are. That you’re not freaking out. You’ve been through a lot.”

“I am freaking out,” Jensen answered. “I’m just doing it really quietly. I kind of feel like I’m in a dream. A really weird dream that I need to just play along with.”

Jared’s voice was tight when asked, “Otherwise it turns into a nightmare? One of those kinds of dreams?”

“Not exactly.”

Jensen swallowed what was left in his glass and lowered his eyes. Strong tan throat, the hollow between sharp collarbones, broad chest, narrow waist and hips, thighs long and muscular under taut fabric, bare feet pulled up underneath him.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Why not?” Jensen asked, drunk now and reckless with it.

Jared moved so quickly that Jensen missed it when he blinked. Suddenly, Jared was right next to him. “Because you’re playing with fire. This is dangerous and too soon. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t.” Jensen wanted to be sure of that but uncertainty started to eat away at what he’d said as soon as it was out of his mouth.

Jared gave him a knowing look. “Tell me to go to bed, Jensen. Tell me to go away.”

Jensen allowed the silence to speak for him.

“Get underneath the covers.”

Jensen did, thinking that Jared was putting him to bed, relieved in a way that his challenge had been turned down. He’d be grateful in the morning and anyway he was feeling dazed and drunk.

For some reason, Jared pulled the velvet cover away and threw it on the floor. He lifted the sheet up to Jensen’s chin, stared at him briefly, his expression unreadable, then pulled it up and held it over his face.

Flustered, Jensen quickly jerked it back down again. “What are you doing?”

“Trust me,” Jared said quietly, holding his gaze.

Jensen took a deep breath and relaxed his body. “Yes,” he said after a pause, like it had been a question.

Jared lifted the sheet again and pulled it up over his head, a cotton shroud covering him, hiding him. Jensen felt Jared tucking it under the mattress above his head, then at the bottom. The world became a yellow glow of candle-light and shifting shadows, hot breath and muffled sound.

Jared ran his hand slowly down the side of Jensen’s body, coming to rest at his hip, rubbing the ridge of Jensen’s hipbone with his thumb. The thin sheet formed a barely- there barrier between them, allowing the heat of Jared’s touch to seep through it in a way that thrilled rather than hurt. Jensen gasped at the sensation.

“Take off your clothes,” Jared whispered close to Jensen’s ear, his breath warm and moist through the sheet.

Jensen froze, nervous again, even with the false courage of alcohol burning through his veins.

“It’s okay, Jen. Trust me,” Jared’s disembodied voice whispered.

Jensen couldn’t have done it if they had been face to face, but like this, so close and yet still hidden from each other, it was possible. Anything was possible. He tugged his t-shirt off, careful not to pull the sheet loose from the mattress above him. He hesitated again and felt Jared waiting, a silent and patient presence. Jensen took a deep breath and lifted his hips, pushed the sweatpants down and kicked them off. Jared pulled them away and tucked the sheet back in afterwards.

Even though he was completely covered, Jensen had never felt so naked and exposed. He didn’t know what Jared was doing, couldn’t see his face to read his expression, but it was as if he could feel the heat of Jared’s gaze running down the outline of his body where the sheet clung to his skin, intimate and revealing.

A shadow blocked out the dim candlelight and he felt the press of Jared’s mouth against his. It was maddening not being able to feel the soft touch of Jared’s lips and the wet heat of the inside of his mouth. When Jensen made a frustrated sound, Jared bit his bottom lip, sucking it until the sheet was wet. He pulled away and it clung to Jensen’s lip, a damp cotton kiss.

Jensen jerked when Jared’s mouth moved to his nipple, sensitive under the sharp scrape of his teeth. A network of electricity lit up under his skin, reactions sparking up everywhere.

I don’t think I can do this, Jensen thought, tensing up. It’s too much.

“Shh, it’s okay,” Jared whispered back at his ear, his hand stroking Jensen’s chest, soothing, letting him catch his breath.

A few gentle, comforting strokes and his hand started moving slowly down Jensen’s chest, down to his stomach, lower. Jensen held his breath, waiting for it. A full body shiver ran through him when Jared stroked his dick. “You’re so hard,” Jared said, pressing his palm against Jensen’s erection and gently rubbing. A ragged sigh escaped Jensen’s lips. “Does that feel good?” Jared’s voice was low and rough. Jensen nodded his head.

“And this?” Jared asked as he wrapped his hand around Jensen’s shaft, lifted it and tightened his grip, started stroking slowly up and down, his thumb rubbing over the head on the upstroke. Jensen arched up and choked out, “I haven’t ever–”

It was too ridiculous and embarrassing a thing to say out loud. How could he explain his enforced abstinence? His father’s violent opposition? How could he explain the fear that had been conditioned into him of surrendering to extreme emotion of any kind?

 _I’m not angry with you, Jensen. I don’t want to hurt you. If you learned some control over yourself, you wouldn’t have to be punished. It’s your own fault._

“I know you haven’t, but you’re here with us now. You’re safe. Just let go, Jensen.”

Jared’s voice had a hypnotizing effect on him. He unclenched his thigh muscles and tried to relax, to concentrate on the feeling of Jared’s hand, to block out the other voice. His breath was coming fast, puffing the sheet away from his mouth. Jensen felt like he was perched on a precipice, about to fall, his body tensing in preparation for the plunge.

Then Jared’s hand was gone and Jensen moaned in frustrated surprise. He could hear Jared’s amused exhale. There was a pause and then, “I want to be closer to you,” followed by, “Turn over and lie on your front.” Jared’s voice was deep and quiet.

Jensen understood the implication of that right away. That was how it worked when men were in bed together. He stiffened, nervous and uncertain. Jared gently stroked his chest again.

Okay, he could do this. He wanted to do this. He rolled over on to his stomach and instinctively spread his legs, hearing Jared’s sharply indrawn breath as he did.

“Jesus,” Jared hissed and ran a hot hand from Jensen’s nape down his spine to the hollow of his back. He hesitated and then ran one finger down the groove of Jensen’s ass.

Jensen’s dick was trapped beneath him. He twisted against the mattress, desperate for some friction.

“Jensen, I’m going to take off my clothes, okay?”

Jensen nodded and tried not to let the growl at the thought of Jared naked escape from where it was trapped in his throat. He heard the sounds of Jared undressing and then felt the mattress dip beneath his weight.

“Are you okay?”

Jensen nodded.

“I need to hear you say it.”

Jensen lifted his head slightly towards Jared’s shadow. “I’m okay. I want you to touch me.” He blushed at the words and needy tone. But Jared couldn’t see his embarrassment. Jensen could say whatever he liked. “I want to feel you against me. But what I really want is to feel you inside me.”

Jensen heard Jared’s quick intake of breath. There was a moment’s hesitation and then he stretched out on top of Jensen, the heaviness of his body overwhelming, his erection snug in the cleft of Jensen’s ass. “Soon,” he whispered at Jensen’s ear. “I promise you that’s going to happen real soon.” He started talking again as he moved his hips. Quiet, heated promises and heavy breath and rubbing skin.

Again, Jensen felt the frustration of being so close to something that was prohibited by the barrier of the cotton sheet between their bodies. Jared’s thrusts against him were pushing him up the mattress so he placed his hands flat against the headboard, bracing his weight and countering Jared’s movements. Jared moaned and tightened the hand he had wrapped over Jensen’s hip, the other gripping his shoulder, his movements speeded up, faltered, and his words became just sounds and Jensen’s repeated name.

Jared let out a loud gasp and Jensen felt wet heat seep through the sheet against his skin. Jensen shuddered in sympathy, his heart thumping loudly in his chest.

Jared was a slack, heavy weight crushing him into the mattress, but Jensen really didn’t want him to ever move. Anyway, that would mean looking him in the eye and Jensen wasn’t sure he could do that.

Jared rolled off him onto the opposite side that Jensen was facing. He tugged the sheet free from the mattress and pulled it down to Jensen’s waist, gently wiped away the patch of wetness left in the hollow of his lower back. Jensen took a deep breath of cooler air, opened his eyes and tried to adjust them to the brighter light. He kept his back to Jared, staring at the wall, needing a minute to pull himself together.

“Jensen, look at me.”

Jensen turned over and swallowed hard at the sight of Jared lying next to him, naked and relaxed. Jared had one leg pulled up, cock soft against his thigh, completely comfortable with his own nudity. Jensen ran his eyes back up Jared’s body, pausing to take in the tattoo on his chest. It looked Egyptian. A female figure with the head of a cat against the outline of a blazing sun. She held a looped cross in one hand.

Jensen looked up and met Jared’s gaze. Jared leaned forward and pulled the sheet completely away from Jensen’s body. “My turn,” he said and slowly lowered his eyes down Jensen’s body, pausing at his erection. Jensen’s dick twitched and Jared’s gaze became heavy and hooded. Jensen reached out, wanting to touch.

“No,” Jared said sharply, briefly gripping his wrist and then pushing him away. His fingers left a red-welt bracelet on Jensen’s skin. “No, Jensen, you can’t touch me. Not yet,” he said more gently as Jensen rubbed his burning wrist.

Embarrassed, Jensen reached down to pull the sheet up to cover himself. “No,” Jared said again firmly. “I want to watch you touch yourself.”

Jensen’s face flooded with heat. “I –I can’t,” he choked out.

“You can. It’s normal, Jensen. It’s allowed. Please.”

Jensen looked away, his heartbeat fast and breathing shallow. He hesitated but finally gave in, desperate for release. And he wanted to please Jared, to not appear like the complete freak that he was. He lowered his hand and took hold of his erection. Jared made a low, approving noise, but Jensen refused to look at him. He couldn’t. He leaned back and closed his eyes, focussing on the pleasure of his hand and the after-image of Jared’s naked body burned into the backs of his eyelids.

Despite the intense embarrassment of being watched, his orgasm crept up on him quickly, washed over him in a wave that freed him of any self-consciousness so that he arched his body and cried out loudly.

Jensen opened his eyes, blinking away tears, when he felt Jared’s tongue against his skin. He looked down, shocked to see that Jared was licking up the come off his stomach. He threw his head back against the pillows, squeezed his eyes tightly shut and bit his lip until he tasted copper in his mouth, his skin heating up and bristling beneath that hot, lapping tongue. He looked back down and saw that his stomach was covered in charcoal-black smudges in the places where Jared’s tongue had trailed over his skin.

Jensen blinked and tried to clear his head. Just at that moment, Jared looked up through sweaty, unruly bangs and Jensen choked when he saw Jared’s eyes, hard and green as glass, inhuman, his pupils closed to black pinpoints.

Jared quickly twisted his head away and Jensen scrambled backwards, chest heaving, both fascinated and frightened.

When Jared turned back to face him, his expression was soft and regretful, his eyes hazel and familiar. “Hey,” he said quietly. “You okay?”

Jensen could hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears. “I think I’m going insane. I’m starting to see things.”

Jared smiled, patient and serious. “No, you’re not.”

Jared had such a definitive way of saying things sometimes.

Jensen let out a nervous laugh. “How can you be sure? Anyway, you might be crazy as well, so how can I believe you? ”

That seemed unlikely, though. Jared projected sane rationality.

Jared looked amused. “I’m not crazy either. Simone got all the crazy genes.” He plumped up the cushions and sat up against the headboard next to Jensen. “Do you want some more cake?” he asked, eyeing the enormous fairytale cake, as if that was in any way an appropriate thing to say.

Jared looked so much like his normal self that Jensen almost believed he had imagined Jared’s eyes changing like that. Almost. “What just happened, Jared?”

“I simulated having sex with you and then I watched you jerking off,” Jared said conversationally. “I admit that I came really quickly because I couldn’t help it. You’re so hot. I normally have great stamina. I’m sorry. ”

Jensen could feel himself blushing. “That’s not what I meant. Jesus, Jared!”

Jared’s lips twitched and Jensen couldn’t help laughing. It started out as an embarrassed titter and then turned into real laughter when Jared joined him, both of them cracking up. They laughed at themselves, at each other, at how ridiculously happy they were.

Jensen relaxed, aware that Jared was distracting him, but choosing to file away what he had seen with all the other unexplainable things in this place. He was comforted by Jared’s casual manner and the warmth emanating from his body. Jensen had never met anybody who made him feel reassured so easily. It was like he’d known Jared his whole life. It had just been his imagination. It couldn’t be real.

“Only a crazy man would want to eat cake this late at night.”

Jared grinned. “So do you want some?”

“Definitely.”

Jared cut them a slice and they shared it in companionable silence, glancing sideways and catching each other looking, smiling.

“I’ll get you some clean sheets,” Jared said when they were done.

They changed the bedding together when he came back. Jared pulled down the covers and patted the mattress. Jensen got in and Jared pulled the covers up to his chin, making him feel like a kid in some family sitcom. “Good night, beautiful Jensen,” he said, looking down at Jensen with a strange, wistful expression.

“You’re not staying with me?”

“No, I shouldn’t. My bedroom’s just next door if you need me. I have to go into New Orleans early in the morning and I probably won’t be around until later. Simone and Irena will take care of you. Good night,” he said again and dropped a quick, hot kiss on Jensen’s lips. He mumbled something else that Jensen missed.

Jared went around the room blowing out the candles. He turned and smiled at Jensen from the doorway. The light from the hallway lit up one side of his face; the other half remained a shadowed mystery. He closed the door behind him and the room was plunged into darkness.

Jensen lay in the dark thinking. He realized that he wasn’t the same person who had stepped off that plane. He brought his hand up to his mouth, remembering Jared’s lips against his. He lowered his hand and touched the raw places where Jared had licked his stomach. He was becoming somebody new, and tomorrow he got to wake up and live this brand new life.

Jensen fell asleep with a small smile on his face.

Part three  
Jensen opened his eyes to darkness, sat up and immediately got out of bed. It was a sudden thing. One minute he was asleep and the next he was awake and standing up. Compelled by some unknown instinct, he strode across the room to the French doors, unlocked them and stepped out onto a balcony. He looked out over a wild and overgrown garden. A long, unkempt lawn stretched from the house towards a line of trees. Jensen bent his knees slightly and jumped up onto the balcony wall, perfectly balanced. Part of his conscious mind was aware of what he was doing but it had no control over his actions. Something else was in the driver’s seat in his head.

It was about a ten foot drop to the lawn below him. He stepped off the balcony wall, landed easily and started running towards the trees as soon as he hit the ground. The moon was a flat, white disc in the night sky above him, casting a bright light over the darkened world. It was hot and still, not a breath of wind in the air.

Jensen’s legs were strong and powerful beneath him, muscles and tendons and bones knitting themselves into new forms as he ran. He paused when he got to the edge of the trees, breathed deeply, stepped forward and got swallowed by the shadows.

The night was a palpable thing around him, thick and dark and hot, like an enveloping fur coat. The furtive sounds and heady smells of creatures and plants, absent under the glaring eye of the sun, filled his senses.

He turned when he heard something next to him disturbing the undergrowth. A long black shape moved between the trees to his right. Jensen recognized it and grinned and started running again, leaping over fallen trees and streams and wet, boggy places, constantly aware of the companion shadow running alongside him. The liberating joy of running wild and naked burned through his being. He dropped onto all fours, thinking that it would be easier and faster, and ended up clumsily careening into a tree stump, the bark stripping the skin off his shoulder. He pushed himself back up onto two legs and heard laughter echoing behind him. It bounced from tree to tree, disguising its origin.

Jensen sat down on the tree stump and growled in the direction that he thought it had come from, whimpered as he licked away the splinters of wood and bark caught in his skin. Something rustled next to him and he stilled instantly, head cocked to the side, alert. The pink, twitching nose and silky whiskers of a swamp rabbit with its big ears and inquisitiveness and lack of awareness appeared from the undergrowth. Jensen watched it hopping away, brown haunches and a white cotton-tail. It stopped and sat up, suddenly conscious of him, sensing the danger. Jensen’s heart beat quicker in his chest.

Somewhere in the seconds between sitting on that tree stump and then clutching the limp, furry warmth of the rabbit’s dead body in his hands, Jensen transformed into a hunter. And not in the way that his father had taught him, no calculation or forethought, just his catching hands holding the rabbit down as it kicked and struggled and he twisted its neck. Jensen straightened his fingers, sharp like blades, and stabbed them into the soft place at the join of the rabbit’s ribcage, in under the cage of bone, ripping it open and exposing the hot, blood-filled organs.

Jensen buried his face in wet heat, struggled to drink and eat with his human mouth. He heard the crackle of breaking twigs and turned to watch a long shadow separating itself from the undergrowth. A big black leopard padded out of the dark into the clearing. Jensen hissed at it, blood-drunk and defensive of his kill. The leopard opened its mouth, showed its sharp teeth and hissed back at him. It stalked towards him, legs bent and shoulder blades rolling under black fur. Jensen shook his head to clear it of the aggression and hunger, the lust for meat. He threw the rabbit at the leopard and lowered his head submissively. The big cat didn’t even dart a glance at the carcass, just kept coming. Jensen licked his lips and waited, heart beating fast and his cock thick and hot between his legs.

The leopard got to him and settled back on its haunches, eyes shining green and translucent in the dark. It placed a paw on his thigh–claws extended just enough to hook into his skin like a warning–and licked a long hot stripe up his chest. Jensen shuddered at the abrasive, scratchy heat of its tongue on his skin. It licked him again, started lapping up the mess of blood on his chest, his chin and around his mouth, and where it licked him, black fur bristled out of Jensen’s skin. The leopard nudged him, head butting against his chest. Jensen leaned forward and nuzzled into the side of its neck, breathing in its furry, animal smell. The leopard licked Jensen’s ears and his head, a rumbling purr vibrating from its throat.

Jensen lay down, the earth cool and moist beneath him, the sky sparkling with stars through the black branches of the trees above him. He felt the paw on his thigh stretch into long fingers and a big, warm palm. The moon’s white face looked down on him. Jared’s face appeared in front of it, blocking out its light and Jensen laughed as if they were sharing a joke. Jared grinned and leaned down to kiss him. They bit at each other’s lips, tongues heavy and insistent in each other’s mouths, hands pulling each other closer. They wrestled and struggled, rolled over and over, collecting twigs and leaves against their skins. A tree stopped their tussling progress. Jared pulled Jensen up, turned him around, shoved him against the tree and kicked his legs apart. He dropped to his knees and opened Jensen up, wet tongue and thick thumbs inside him. Jensen dug his nails into the bark of the tree, holding on.

Jared stood up and fitted himself close behind Jensen, cock nudging at his slippery entrance. Jensen reached back, clutched Jared’s hips and pulled him forward, grimaced at the pain of being breached and cried out in pleasure when Jared started moving inside him. He threw his head back onto Jared’s shoulder, wrapped a hand around Jared’s nape and pulled him closer as he arched backwards. Jared held him tightly, one arm locked around his chest, fingers digging in and bruising his ribs, his other hand on Jensen’s cock, jerking him off. They rocked together and came at the same time, their wild cries echoing through the trees.

***  
Jensen woke up hard, his erection tenting the sheet. He lay in bed and stared up at the ceiling, replaying the dream in his mind, blushing with embarrassment that his subconscious could come up with something like that. Meaning to get up and go for a pee, he flung back the covers and froze when he saw that his legs and feet were covered with dried mud and that the sheets were dirty with it.

Jensen had never sleepwalked before in his life, not that he was aware of anyway, but he must have done that last night. He lay back and considered this weird new behavior in combination with the intense dream. Maybe it was because he’d been so worked up after what happened between him and Jared. Or maybe it was because of a chemical imbalance in his system, the result of not taking the medicine.

Embarrassed and confused, he quickly got up, pulled on the sweatpants he’d been wearing last night and stripped the bed, unsure about what to do with the sheets, aware of his aching muscles and a feeling of tenderness in his ass. Bent over the bed, he suddenly got such a strong flashback to Jared behind him, inside him that it felt tangible and real, nothing dream-like about the sensation of being filled and claimed. Jensen gasped and twisted his hands into the pile of bedding, panting to catch his breath.

His stomach suddenly turned, bile rising in his throat. He rushed to the bathroom and made it only just in time. The mess in the toilet confirmed other details of the dream. His bare, unconscious hands around the rabbit’s neck. And something worse than just that. Horror filled him and he threw up again, over and over, until there was nothing left and he was dry heaving into the toilet.

He stayed like that, hunched over the toilet bowl for a few minutes, his brain spinning. Eventually he got up, flushed away the evidence of what he had done and brushed his teeth twice to get rid of the taste in his mouth. Jensen looked at his reflection in the mirror, at his pale skin and feverish, glassy eyes. “What’s happening to me?” he asked the wild-eyed stranger in the mirror.

“Something wonderful,” Simone’s voice answered from the doorway.

Jensen turned quickly to face her. She was leaning against the doorframe, dressed entirely in black and Jensen was struck by the realization, half-formed from the moment he had met her, that there was something unsettling about Simone, an alien, seductive beauty beneath the girlish effervescence.

“Poor baby, you’ve hurt your shoulder. Let me clean it for you.”

Jensen flinched away when she reached towards him. Simone looked surprised and hurt. “Jensen, don’t do that. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m trying to help you.”

She looked so genuinely upset by his reaction that Jensen felt guilty. “Sorry,” he mumbled. He twisted his neck to look at the scratches on his shoulder where he had fallen against the tree stump. “I must have gone sleepwalking outside last night and I think I fell over.”

Simone frowned and put a consoling hand on his shoulder. “You’re shaking.”

“I’ve never done anything like that before. I think I did something really terrible. I– I’m scared.”

“It’s okay. You don’t need to be scared. Really, Jensen, it’s going to be okay. We’re going to take care of you. Me and Jared and Irena and Marko. We won’t let anything happen to you. You’re safe here with us.”

Safe. It was such an alluring word. Jensen had been longing to feel safe his whole life. He had lost his father, had finally managed to free himself of the house that he had felt imprisoned in and had escaped Doctor Fischer. The possibility of a new life stretched out in front of him but everything felt so strange and complicated. There was a secret hidden here, something that he was a part of but also excluded from.

Jensen didn’t know if he could trust his feelings for Jared. He didn’t understand the strange bond between them and the connection he also felt with Simone. He didn’t understand why things he knew should have bothered him simply didn’t. Like the way Jared and Simone touched each other. Coming to this place, he had stepped through a door into a new world where he was someone or something else. But a part of him still remembered what it was like in the other world, a world where brothers and sisters did not touch each other in that way, where big, black cats did not follow you in the dark.

“I think I’m losing my mind. I’m seeing things and doing things. Violent things,” Jensen babbled.

A revelation came to him. Something that had been out there in the periphery of his awareness probably his whole life.

“Maybe it was never about my immune system but about my head.” Jensen tapped his index finger against his temple, something frantic and frightened bubbling up inside him. “Maybe that’s what my disease has always been about. My dad used to warn me that terrible things would happen if I didn’t take my pills. He told me that there was something dangerous inside me, something that needed to be controlled. Maybe he was too ashamed to admit it was a mental illness. That would explain all the secrecy and the way he treated me, what he meant by my _inheritance_ from my mother. He never talked about her. Maybe she went crazy too.”

Simone closed the lid of the toilet and gently steered Jensen back to sit down on it, pushing him back firmly when he tried to stand up again. She opened the medicine cabinet and got out gauze and disinfectant. “I think you’ve been through a lot over the past three days,” she said, cool and calm, swabbing the scratches on his shoulder.

Had he really only been in this house for three days? In some ways it felt like less but in other ways it felt as if he had always been here.

“I think your –” Both Simone and Jared seemed allergic to the word. “I think your father hurt you and made you think that there was something wrong with you, Jensen, when there isn’t.” She threw the gauze away and put her hands on his face, lifted his head and looked him in the eyes. “You’re not going crazy and you don’t need the pills. You don’t have a disease, not of the immune system nor of the mind. Be patient. Everything will make sense soon. You’re so close now, baby.”

“Why are you lying and hiding things from me?” Jensen asked, watching her pupils widen.

She kissed him softly on the mouth, then on his forehead. “Jared really wanted to be here,” she said, as if lying and Jared were synchronous topics of conversation. “He was so insistent that you needed taking care of this morning. Let me take care of you,” she whispered close to his ear.

“The boy needs to catch his breath and maybe have some breakfast, Simone, leave him be,” a deep voice said. A man leaned against the doorframe where Simone had stood earlier, legs and arms casually crossed.

Simone let out a happy, surprised shriek, ran across and leaped into his arms. He laughed and lifted her up, pulling her legs around him. She covered his face in quick kisses.

Twisting slightly in his arms, she faced Jensen. “This is Jeff,” she said, her face coy and smiling next to the other man’s. “He’s like us. But always away and unreliable. So don’t try to love him because he’s a complete asshole and will break your heart.”

Unperturbed by her criticism, Jeff smiled warmly. “Hello, Jensen. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

Jensen nodded at him, feeling vulnerable and ridiculous sitting half-dressed on a toilet seat.

“Ignore Simone, she’s a god-awful liar. Feel free to love me if you want to.”

Jensen just stared back at him, unable to come up with the smart quip that was obviously required.

“Isn’t he beautiful?” Simone whispered, her eyes on Jensen.

“Yeah,” Jeff answered, sounding amused. “But he looks terrified and in need of a shower. Come on, girl, let’s give him some breathing space.” He gave Jensen another amused look and carried Simone out of the bathroom, kicking the door shut behind him.

Jensen heard them laughing in the other room. He looked down at himself, the mud on his skin and a few darker, crusted streaks that looked like dried blood. He shuddered and took off the borrowed sweatpants, wishing for the security of his own clothes.

He stood under the shower, hot as he could bear it, let the water wash away the dirt on his skin and tried to empty his mind.

The bedding had been removed and there was a pile of clean clothes on the mattress when he went back into the bedroom. The shirt and pants were slightly too big for him and he had to roll them up. They probably belonged to Jared. The desire to have Jared there to explain things to him (because of course Jared knew the secret of what was happening to him) and to reassure him was overwhelming, a physical sensation of need in his gut.

Jensen left the bedroom, attracted by the sound of voices and the smell of cooking from downstairs. He passed the bedroom next to his and paused at the faintest trace of a familiar scent. Jared. Jensen opened the door and looked into the empty room. It was spare and masculine. Jensen stepped quietly inside, feeling like he was intruding and sat down on the bed. This is where Jared sleeps, he thought. He looked around, trying to get a sense of who Jared was. He was about to pick up a book splayed open on the floor next to the bed when he caught a glimpse of something familiar revealed through the partly open closet doors. He got up and pulled the doors fully open, felt no surprise, just a sense of sad betrayal, when he saw his duffel bag and backpack stashed behind the jumble of shoes.

Jensen pulled out the backpack, found his wallet and put it in his pocket. He rooted out a bottle of pills from inside the duffel, stared at it for a few minutes then put it back, feeling oddly like an addict who has avoided the temptation of a fix.

There were five missed calls on his phone, all from the same number. Jensen was surprised to see that Mrs Campbell, a neighboring rancher from back home, had been trying to call him.

“Hello, Jensen,” her familiar, tired, but friendly voice answered when he returned the call. “I’m so sorry to call when you’re on vacation but I have some bad news for you.”

A vacation. That seemed ridiculous right now.

Mrs Campbell was the only person Jensen had told that he was leaving. He had felt like he owed it to her to not just disappear. She was always kind to him, even though Jensen was never allowed much contact with their neighbors or just people in general.

Jensen reassured her that the phone call wasn’t an inconvenience. He kept his voice quiet, not wanting to alert anyone to the fact that he had found his bags.

“I know that you and your daddy knew Malcolm Fischer so I thought I’d better call and let you know that he’s been killed.”

“What?”

“Yes, it’s a terrible thing. They think he was murdered, Jensen. And in his own house. There’s all this talk about an animal attack. But that’s just ridiculous. Animals don’t behave in that way. He was a very strange and reclusive man. I’m sorry to say this, but who knows what he was mixed up in and why somebody might have wanted to kill him. He always struck me as man with a lot of secrets. There have been a lot of police around. It’s all very stressful and frightening.”

Jensen’s mind tried to absorb what she had just said, shock making it incomprehensible at first. Doctor Fischer was a hard, cruel man and Jensen couldn’t find it in him to mourn his passing, but he was a person, someone Jensen had known, a link he had to the human race and Jensen had so few of those. Now he was gone.

“Jensen, are you still there? I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. ”

Jensen told her that he was fine. The conversation continued for a few more minutes before Jensen said that he had to go.

“I’m glad you managed to get away,” she said quickly, sounding envious. Jensen heard someone bawling at her in the background, her drunken husband or elderly mother or one of her belligerent sons. They all sounded the same.

Jensen pictured her and told her what she wanted to hear. “Thank you for calling me, Frances. I’m having a great time. I’m already in love with the prettiest Louisiana girl and I’m never coming home.”

He could hear the smile in her voice when she responded. “If anybody deserves to be loved, it’s you, Jensen. Don’t take this the wrong way but I hope I never see you again. Don’t come back here. I hope you’re happy. And I’m sorry too.”

“For what?”

“For seeing and knowing and not telling. For not helping you.”

Jensen heard what she was saying, the meaning lying beneath the iceberg tip of her words. “It’s not your fault,” he said, absolving her. “You have your own family to deal with.”

They listened to each other breathing, a moment of silent communion between two people who had nothing in common besides the shared burden of fear and hurt inflicted on them by the people closest to them.

“Goodbye, Mrs Campbell.”

“Goodbye, Jensen.”

Jensen put his phone in his pocket and left Jared’s bedroom. The house beyond the bedroom was new and unfamiliar to him. He followed the long corridor that eventually curved and opened into a long antebellum staircase leading down to a tiled hallway. The house had an old, nostalgic look of faded, shabby grandeur.

He paused at the portrait dominating the landing.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” Jeff said behind him.

Jensen didn’t turn around. A hot, uncomfortable feeling spread through his midriff. “Yes,” he answered. “Who are they?”

“Jared and Simone’s parents.”

Jensen looked at their pale, painted faces, their dark hair and feline eyes, their lips curved as if they were about to laugh out loud at some secret joke, a moment caught and suspended in time. “They look so similar.”

Jeff laughed – it was a low and mocking sound. “Maybe the artist lacked the skill and imagination to make them look different.”

Jensen continued to stare at the portrait, mesmerized by it. “They look so in love,” he whispered to himself.

“They were. He loved her desperately, constantly. Followed her soon after she passed, died of a broken heart.”

Jensen turned away from the portrait. Jeff was stretched out on a worn chaise-longue at the bottom of the staircase, heavy boots on the faded brocade, lazily smoking a thick cigar.

“Nobody dies of a broken heart.”

Jeff tapped the ash from his cigar on the tiled floor. “What do you know about love? You don’t even know who you are so how could you understand a love like that?”

Jensen remained silent, unable to argue with that. He stayed where he was, intimidated by the other man’s charismatic confidence, his cynical smile and gruff, knowing voice. He made Jensen feel like an awkward kid. Maybe if Jensen just stood here, Jeff would go away and leave him alone. He turned away and looked at the bronze statue on a table beneath the portrait. It was the figure of a medieval horseman with a long spear in his hand impaling a writhing leopard. A shiver ran through him.

“That’s in case we forget.”

Jeff’s voice was right next to his ear, breath warm on the back of his neck. Jensen hadn’t even heard him come up behind him. He shivered again. “Forget what?” he asked quietly, not daring to move.

“That we have enemies. That some people will misunderstand and hate us, try to destroy us.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Jensen’s heart was beating fast and his throat was hot and dry. He could feel the heat coming off Jeff’s body behind him.

“I think you do, Jensen. I think you’ve always known. When you were a kid, lying snug and warm in your bed and you heard the night calling to you outside, you knew.”

Jensen shivered again.

“When that man was trying to break you and change what you are, you knew.”

Jensen stiffened, gritted his teeth and breathed hard through his nose, his hands curling into fists at his sides.

Jeff moved closer, barely an inch of heated, electrified space between their bodies, his voice a growl in Jensen’s ear. “You have something inside you that will never submit, never be tamed, no matter how hard it’s kicked and beaten, and no matter how hard you try to deny and bury it, Jensen. You know what I’m talking about.”

Jensen finally reached a breaking point and unable to take anymore, he whirled around and shouted, “You don’t know me or what I’ve been through! You don’t get to tell me who I am. I don’t have to listen to this anymore. I’m leaving.”

Until that moment the possibility of leaving hadn’t even crossed his mind, but it was exactly what he needed to do, to get out of this house and clear his head. A familiar feeling of anxious claustrophobia was settling heavily over him.

Jensen pushed his way past Jeff, avoided looking directly at him and rushed down the stairs on unsteady legs. He headed towards another door, opened it and found himself in a sunny, lived-in kitchen.

Simone and Irena were sitting at a large oak table sipping from coffee mugs. Both of them turned, warm smiles fading when they noticed his expression.

“Jensen—”

“I’m leaving,” Jensen cut Simone off. “Don’t try to stop me.”

Simone paled and looked panic-stricken. “What? You can’t leave! Where will you go? We only just got you back. You can’t leave us.”

Jensen saw another door that led outside. Not thinking straight, desperate for some air and focused only on escaping, he moved towards it. Marko came out of a storeroom next to the door and stood firmly in front of it, his muscular bulk blocking Jensen’s exit.

Jensen stopped and looked around wildly. Irrational panic started to rise up inside him as memories of similar moments filled his head.

“Irena, tell him he can’t leave. Why won’t he listen?” Simone wailed, “Jeff, do something for god’s sake.”

Jeff was standing in the other doorway. Jensen was hemmed in on both sides.

“What do you want me to do? Tie him up?”

“If we have to.”

Jensen felt like he was going to be sick.

“Quiet, Simone!” Irena rapped out. “Marko, get out of Jensen’s way. You’re frightening him.”

Jensen turned to look at Irena, his salvation in amongst all this craziness.

She put out a soothing hand towards him. “If you want to go, Jensen, we won’t stop you. But we are a long way from the city. You cannot walk. Somebody will drive you to where you want to go.”

“Okay.” Jensen sucked in calming breaths of air. “Okay, thank you.”

“When you are ready, come back to us. We will be here waiting for you.”

Irena gave Marko a look. He nodded and took a set of keys from a hook on the wall, opened the door and waited in silence, eyes intent on Jensen, his expression indecipherable.

“Irena! He can’t be out there on his own!”

“Stop making so much noise, Simone, and dry your eyes.”

“Irena’s right.” Jeff sat down at the table and finished Simone’s coffee. “We can’t stop him.”

Jensen nodded at them, wondered whether he should inanely thank them for their hospitality. Simone stared at him, angry and hurt; Jeff leaned back in his chair, cynically amused; Irena looked calmly unconcerned. Eventually Jensen decided on just another quick nod and hurried out the door before anybody changed their minds about letting him go. Marko followed him.

Jensen could hear Simone crying as he left. “What if he doesn’t come back? What if he hurts someone? Oh God, Jared’s going to be furious.”

Marko didn’t speak, not even once, on the drive into New Orleans, simply nodded when Jensen read the street name off a piece of paper with Steve’s address on it from his wallet. The bayous rushed past them, the landscape wet and watery and unfamiliar. Back in Texas, Jensen had imagined what it would to be like when he arrived in Louisiana, pictured himself taking a cab into the city and arriving at Steve’s bar, his friend’s surprise at seeing him, that first beer.

None of it included this feeling that his whole life had been turned inside out, that everything he’d thought (or pretended to think) real and true was actually a charade. Something was living and lurking at the back of his mind, prowling the corridors of his consciousness, waiting to slip through and take control. And it had always been there, of course it had.

Jensen didn’t think about Jared. Jensen was good at that. At switching his mind off and not thinking, distancing himself from where he was and what he was feeling. It was a lesson he’d learned young so that he could deal with his dad’s meanness. Jensen would just erase himself by imagining that he was floating in this big, cool, dark lake. There was no sound because his ears were submerged just beneath the water. No wind or waves, just a gentle rocking. And the lake was inside his head, an empty space filled with still water and this tiny version of him just floating on the surface, locked away and unreachable.

“Be careful, Jensen,” Marko said when he pulled up to the curb on Frenchman Street.

Jensen was surprised to hear Marko’s voice. It was hard to work out what he meant because his face was unreadable. It could have been an expression of concern for Jensen to take care of himself or a threatening warning to watch his step. Jensen nodded, acceptant of both meanings. “Thank you for the ride,” he said and got out. Marko didn’t look back at him in the rear-view mirror as he drove off.

Steve wasn’t at his apartment or the bar that he owned just beneath it. The girl working behind the bar shrugged and said that Jensen could probably find him there later that night.

Not knowing what else to do, Jensen wandered the French Quarter like a tourist, then sat outside a coffee shop for a few hours and watched the surge of humanity on the street.

The sun was hot on his skin, the humidity heavy and pressing. Jensen felt removed and anonymous, saw himself from the point of view of a casual observer: just another person in the crowd, a man casually drinking a cup of coffee on his own, but inside he knew that he was misplaced, changed, lost.

And then, inevitably, a familiar figure appeared a little way off as the mass of laughing, talking people on the sidewalk parted. Jensen swallowed hard, his pulse picking up. He sat immobile and watched Jared making his way with resolute, unsmiling purpose towards him, his tall figure standing out from everybody around him, bland and insignificant in comparison.

Jared was wearing a dark, well-cut suit and white shirt. His longish hair was combed smooth and flat. He looked cool and unaffected by the humid heat. The stylish clothes and casual, professional look suited him, but Jared wore it like a disguise. The strength and power and otherness of what he was lying just beneath it.

Jensen wondered if this immediate physical reaction to seeing Jared unexpectedly would ever go away.

“Can I sit down?”

Jensen nodded. A waitress came over and Jared shook his head when she asked if he wanted to order anything. They sat like that in silence for a few minutes.

Jensen realized he was unconsciously shredding the sugar packets on the table in front of him and stilled one hand with the other, looked up and saw that Jared was watching him closely.

“How did you find me?”

Jared shrugged as if the answer was obvious and not worth wasting the breath of an explanation.

So this was how it was going to be.

“You lied to me,” Jensen said bluntly.

Jared’s jaw tightened but he didn’t dispute Jensen’s accusation.

“You told me to trust you, but you lied. You hid my bags and you took away my choice.”

“No, I gave you another choice and that’s something you’ve never had before.”

“I don’t understand what’s happening to me.”

“You will.”

“So explain it to me.”

“It can’t be explained. You have to experience it for yourself. You’ve been—” Jared clenched his jaw and looked away as if searching for the words. “You’ve been hurt and damaged. Your mind is shut off to the truth. You lie to yourself and hide away in your own head because that’s all you’ve ever known.”

Jared’s expression softened when Jensen flinched. He reached out and took Jensen’s hand. The heat was still there in his touch but less burning than before, more comforting. He leaned forward and said earnestly, “I want you to come back with me, Jensen. We can take care of you.”

It was so tempting, the desire to give in, to allow this strong, beautiful, self-assured man to take control. Jensen could go back with him, get back into that bed, block out everything else and close the door on the world.

But Jensen had been doing that his whole life. “Are you going to force me if I say no?” He allowed the nasty, hurtful intent to lie just beneath the quietness of his voice.

Jared pulled back his hand with a sickened expression. “Of course not!”

They just stared at each other, both breathing hard.

“Give me your phone,” Jared said eventually.

Jensen handed it over. Jared keyed in his number and gave it back to him. He got up, his face set in a mask of anger. “You know where to find me.” He turned to go and Jensen’s mouth almost opened to say something to stop him from leaving.

“Just be careful,” Jared said quickly, looking back at him, an echo of Marko’s words. The mask slipped a little and Jensen realized that it was vulnerability and fear, not anger, holding it in place.

Jared turned, walked away and got swallowed up by the crowd before Jensen could say or do anything.

***  
Steve’s bar was filling up when Jensen went back to it. Steve wasn’t there but the barman, a long-haired guy with a python tattooed up his arm, assured Jensen that he’d turn up soon enough. Jensen sat at a table in a quiet corner and miserably nursed a beer.

After about twenty minutes of watching some guys predatorily circling a group of girls, somebody patted him hard on the back. “Jesus Christ, Jensen! Is that really you?”

Steve had barely changed over the years that Jensen had seen him last. He’d gone from being a friendly, stocky, messy-haired kid to a thickset, messy-haired guy with an easy smile and manner. He was casually dressed in jeans and a faded t-shirt, had a collection of leather and beaded bracelets around his wrists and a tattoo peeking out from under the sleeve of his t-shirt. He looked cool and laid-back and casually confident.

He dropped into the chair opposite Jensen and gave him a blinding smile. “I’ve gotta admit, I wasn’t really sure if you’d make it out here.”

“Why not?” Jensen asked, returning the grin. “I said I was coming.”

“Sure, I know. It’s just I wasn’t sure.”

Jensen understood what he meant.

“I’m sorry about your dad, man.”

Jensen nodded and they didn’t dwell on that topic. When they were kids, Steve hadn’t pretended to hide the intense dislike he’d felt towards Jensen’s father. Jensen had hung out with Steve secretly. Friends weren’t allowed. And after Steve’s family moved away, they kept in contact for years through letters that came and went via Becky Simmons, a co-conspirator from school.

“You look good, Jensen.”

“Thanks, so do you. So all this is yours?” Jensen looked around the bar.

Steve leaned back in his chair. “All mine. I’ve got the band too and we’re playing gigs all over the place. It’s all good. How about you? What have you been up to?”

“Nothing much. I needed to get away, you know, after everything. Thought I’d come out here.”

Jensen felt a familiar foolishness at his awkward inability to respond to the basics of small talk.

Steve stared at him quietly for a minute or two. “I’ll drink to that, my friend. Let’s make our way to the bar and try our damndest to drink it dry. I’m the proprietor here so we can do anything we like.” He stood up, bowed slightly and waved Jensen on towards the bar like some 19th century beau.

And just like that, the school-reunion discomfort disappeared and it was exactly like when they were kids. No questions. No pushing. Just Steve accepting Jensen as he was.

“Why, thank you, kind sir. That’s the best offer I’ve had all night,” Jensen returned with mock formality, grinning.

The thing about Steve was that he never made Jensen feel like a freak who was completely out of touch with the real world. He glossed over the gaps in Jensen’s knowledge and never said things like: _You’ve never seen that TV show? Never heard of that band or celebrity or movie? What’s wrong with you?_ Conversation was always easy and simple with him.

Two beers later and Jensen was feeling the happy buzz he now associated with alcohol. The buzz was coupled with a woolly anesthetizing of his thoughts, a drowning out of things that he didn’t want to have in his head. It was no wonder people drank so much.

“So what time did your flight get in?” Steve asked him, leaning in close because the music had been turned up and the bar had become loud and busy.

“Actually I got here a couple of days ago.”

Steve looked surprised. “And you’re just now getting around to looking me up?”

Jensen shifted uncomfortably. “I got sick at the airport and this guy helped me out. I’ve been staying at his place.”

“Oh, right. Some good Samaritan?”

“Yeah, something like that.” Jensen blushed and shifted around on the barstool again.

Steve was quiet, his gaze razor-sharp and perceptive. “So are you going to see him again?”

Jensen looked away. “I don’t know. It’s complicated.” He sighed and scratched at the label on his beer. “Complications seem to follow me wherever I go.”

A guy came over and said something to Steve that Jensen missed over the noise of the music and people talking. Steve nodded and then turned back to Jensen. “I’m playing tonight, Jensen, but before I go...” He got off his bar stool and went over to a girl talking to a boisterous group of people at a table. She laughed at whatever he said to her, looked over at Jensen, laughed again and nodded. Steve took her arm and brought her over.

“This is Katy, Jensen. She’s a whole lot of fun, funny as hell and totally uncomplicated. Katy, this is Jensen. He’s a friend from out of town and doesn’t know anybody. I love this guy and I want you to look after him for me while I’m playing.”

Katy pouted and pretended to look offended. “Uncomplicated? Are you calling me shallow, Steve?”

“Would I do that?”

“I think you just did, Carlson. Go be a rock god and let me take care of your friend.” Steve grinned and winked at Jensen. Katy smacked him hard on the butt as he walked away. “Come and meet the gang, Jensen.” Her smile was easy and friendly.

Katy introduced him to her friends and they accepted him readily and cheerfully, as if Jensen was the kind of guy who met new people in a bar all the time. It helped Jensen to pretend that he was exactly that sort of person, like an actor taking on a new part. The beers and shots he was drinking helped with that and eventually he was laughing and caught up in half-heard conversations. Steve’s band was awesome and Jensen decided that life didn’t have to be more complicated than this.

“Come outside and get some fresh air with me.” Katy had somehow ended up sitting on his lap because there weren’t enough seats around the table, her arm around his shoulders. The bar was hot and crowded and Jensen was feeling light-headed, a churning feeling starting up in his stomach. Fresh air sounded like an excellent suggestion.

They got up and made their way outside. Katy led him just into a darkened alleyway next to the bar, pushed him against the wall and giggled. “Damn, Jensen, you’re so good-looking.” She stretched up and Jensen let her kiss him, feeling strangely removed, as if he wasn’t really there. She pressed her small, soft body against his, hands twined behind his neck, her tongue in his mouth.

Something stirred inside him. It was partly arousal, but mostly it was something else, an internal shadow shifting, gathering, growing into itself.

Jensen opened his eyes and looked at her and knew that he was a danger to her, that if he didn’t push her away, he would hurt her. That thing prowling the secret back-rooms of his mind came out of the darkness and started clawing its way insistently forward. Jensen tried to resist it but he was being forced backwards through passageways that narrowed and narrowed until he was Alice-in-Wonderland small in a room that tightened like a skin around his conscious self.

Wrenching himself away from her, he staggered backward, dimly aware of her startled cry. Jensen turned and ran down the alleyway.

It was so dark, outside and inside. He couldn’t see, was lost and stumbling through a black fog.

Somebody grabbed him and pressed a sharp, pointed object against his back, searching hands in his pockets. He was being mugged. The animal in his head laughed, bitter and mocking, and his imprisoned conscious self cried out a silent warning that the unwary mugger needed to leave him alone before it was too late.

The warning was ignored. Jensen twisted out of the unsuspecting grasp, grabbed an arm and broke it like a dry branch, heard the splintering of bone, the scream.

Then Jensen’s own arm was painfully twisted up behind his back and he was bear hugged against a wall of muscle, his head pushed down towards his chest. He tried to struggle but could barely move or breathe.

“Marko, get the van. I can’t hold him much longer. He’s already shifting. And call an ambulance for this stupid son of a bitch.”

Jensen was shoved into a metal box. He tried to refocus and gain control but lost more of himself in the effort. Pain, sharp and red-hot, tore through him. He twisted and writhed as his bones broke and his skin burst at the seams. He transformed, strong and new and reborn. Snarling, he threw himself against the walls of the box in his desperation to escape, his claws scrabbling against the smooth surfaces.

A quiet, familiar voice spoke to him from outside the box and eventually Jensen calmed and settled down. He pricked up his ears as he watched the doors of the van and listened to the gentle, soothing rhythm of the sounds, the meaning behind them just beyond his understanding.

He kept his eyes trained on the doors when the voice went away and the van’s engine roared to life. Eventually they’d have to let him out.

He was ready when the engine died and both doors opened simultaneously. He leaped clear of the box and started running as soon as he felt the ground beneath him. He ran and ran, his eyes adjusting and seeing, as if for the first time. His shadow ran alongside him, out of sight in the darkness, but there the whole time, familiar and constant.

He finally wore himself out and collapsed into a hollow space beneath a fallen tree, curled up and instantly fell into a deep and dreamless sleep, utterly exhausted.

Part Four  
Fingers of sunlight poked their way through the trees and woke Jensen up with their searching insistence. His muscles protested at the movement when he uncurled from a stiffened fetal ball. He groaned and spat out some dirt and a dead, papery leaf which had found its way into the corner of his mouth. Trying to stand up, still half-asleep and disoriented, he hit his head on the fallen tree trunk above him and groaned again loudly.

“Morning, sunshine.”

Jeff was sitting against a tree smoking a cigar, a sardonic smile on his face. “Hurts like a son of a bitch, doesn’t it?”

Jensen extricated himself from the undergrowth and stood up on unsteady legs. He became aware of his nakedness and Jeff’s eyes on his body. Immediately self-conscious, he tried to cover his morning semi with his hands.

Jeff’s laugh was a low, amused rumble. “Spoilsport.” He picked up a backpack next to him and threw it at Jensen. “There are some clothes in the bag.”

Jensen caught it and placed it on the ground in front of him, pulled out a pair of boxers, jeans and a t-shirt, relieved to recognize them as his own. He could feel Jeff’s gaze on him as he dressed. Jensen tried to ignore the heat of his watching eyes. His foot nudged the backpack and a sandwich box fell out of it. His stomach rumbled loudly.

“Simone made you some sandwiches and there’s a bottle of water.”

Jensen found the bottle and twisted off the lid, swallowed the water thirstily. He ripped open the box and shoved half a sandwich into his mouth, shaking with hunger. He ate quickly, glancing up at Jeff occasionally, who watched him with an amused look.

“You might want to slow down a little.”

The warning came too late. Jensen’s stomach cramped and he leaned forward, sure he was going to throw up. Managing to hold the food down, he spat out the saliva flooding his mouth and then swilled the taste out with some water.

Jeff laughed again.

“I’m glad you find me so entertaining,” Jensen said irritably.

“Sorry, old and jaded as I am, I do actually still remember my first time. There’s nothing like that first transformation, the wild, scary, insane excitement of it. And then waking up starving and horny and ready to take on anything.”

The experience was obviously an individual thing. Ready to take on anything didn’t exactly cover the way Jensen was feeling. “Did I hurt that guy?” His first clear, rational thought and worry after meeting the basic needs of thirst and hunger.

“He’ll live. You only broke his arm, far as I could tell. He won’t be mugging old ladies and drunken tourists for a while. Who knows, you may have set him on the path of righteousness. Nothing like coming across one of us in a dark alley during the change to frighten a man into a new way of living.”

“So this is what I am,” Jensen said quietly, half talking to himself.

“Yes,” Jeff replied, pulling out a hip flask and toasting Jensen. “This is what you are. Welcome to the family, brother.”

“What if I don’t want it?”

Jeff stared at him steadily before taking a slug from the flask. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he said, “Time to grow up, Jensen. You’ve been unnaturally kept in an infantile state for long enough. This was supposed to happen to you when you hit puberty. You’re at least ten years too late. You should have been prepared for it among your own. It isn’t something to be scared of.”

Jensen snorted, feeling angry and disillusioned. “I almost hurt an innocent girl and I broke a man’s arm. I could have killed him.”

“But you didn’t. It gets easier. Once you learn to have control, the change is exhilarating. You are two parts of a perfect, symbiotic whole. It’s only when you fight and alienate it that the animal self gets scared and lashes out.”

Marko appeared from behind a tree a little way above them on higher ground. He had what looked like a rifle in his hands.

“Anyway, Marko wouldn’t have allowed you to really hurt anyone.”

“He’d have shot me?” Jensen exclaimed, dry mouthed.

“It’s a dart gun, Jensen. He’s a guardian. They keep an eye on us. Our people and theirs have lived together since time immemorial.”

“How many of us—you are there?”

Jeff grinned at the slip. “A few hundred across the country.”

“Hundreds?” Jensen exclaimed, astounded.

“Yeah, and more spread throughout the world.”

“My whole life has been a lie.”

“That’s not your fault. What they did to you—” Jeff clenched his jaw.

Irritated by Jeff’s pity and his own pathetic, complacent, complicit role in the lie that was his life, Jensen ground out, “If we’re not dangerous killers, then explain to me what happened to Doctor Fischer. Tell me that we’re any better than them.”

Jeff took his time relighting his cigar, swallowed again from the flask. “There it is. That fierce, argumentative spark you had as a little kid. I thought they might have put out your light, but there it is.”

Jensen refused to be distracted. “Was it you? Did you kill him?”

“We needed to know if he was going to come after you. If there were others that were a part of it. I was supposed to be watching him, just surveillance. That’s what Jared wanted. I should have remembered what a suspicious, crafty bastard Malcolm Fischer was. I was searching his house but it was a set-up. He ambushed me and I had to defend myself. I had no other choice.”

“What are you talking about? You _knew_ Dr Fischer?”

“I met him a few times. It was years ago. We were in the army together. Me and Fischer and that sick bastard who pretended to be your dad. We knew him as Adam but he had a number of aliases. The three of us and your dad too, your real father, yours and Jared’s and Simone’s.”

The man in the portrait, painted and unreal, flashed in front of Jensen’s eyes. “I have no father.”

Jeff ignored Jensen’s existential paternal crisis. “He was a good man. You would have liked him. He was quieter, like you. Fierce as hell sometimes and layered like a fucking onion. Impossible to unravel. All the years I knew him, I never really worked him out. Jared’s a bit like that too. Simone takes more after your mother.”

 _My mother_ , Jensen repeated in his head, careful not to make his lips move reflexively at the strange, possessive sounds of the words. “What happened to her?”

“Adam killed her.”

Jensen’s heart contracted painfully in his chest at the cynical confirmation of what he had always known. “My father killed my mother.”

“He wasn’t your goddamn father, Jensen. I told you that already,” Jeff ground out angrily.

“No? He made me what I am. That qualifies for fatherhood, right?”

“No, it doesn’t. Your real father was devoted to his family. He loved his kids and he knew and adored your mother all her life. Adam was obsessed with her. That’s not love. We have that effect on them sometimes. They can sense that we’re different, wilder and freer than they could ever hope to be. And she was so…” he trailed off, obviously incapable of expressing the picture he could see in his imagination, his eyes faraway.

Jeff focused on him again. “Adam knew what we were. He found out by accident. We were on maneuver and our unit got caught up in an impossible situation. Your dad shifted, had to because he was trying to save me. That’s the kind of man he was.”

Jensen tried to imagine it, struggled to picture the heroism and sacrifice of war, seeing only the empty, hard discipline of his childhood.

“After we came out of the army, Adam worked for your dad. Wormed his way into your parents’ trust. He killed her because he couldn’t bear not to have her and he took you because he wanted to punish your dad, to punish all of us for being stronger than he could ever be. It must have given him some perverse satisfaction to make you believe that you were his son.”

A sort of numb, blank acceptance had taken hold of Jensen. He felt no shock at what he was hearing. It was as if he was listening to Jeff narrating somebody else’s life-story.

“I guess he met up with Fischer again after he took you,” Jeff continued, dismantling Jensen’s reality piece by piece. “Both of them were mean, small-minded men with a god complex. Years ago Fischer was involved in some secret medical experiments, some sick Nazi-style military bullshit. Something went wrong and he was the fall guy. Must have been a real vindication for him to experiment on you and discover how to suppress your animal self. He had years of research in the basement of his house that I destroyed. Fuck knows what he was planning to do with it.”

“How did my mother die?”

“There was a fire.”

Jensen shuddered and felt a desperate ache for the loss of a mother he would never know. “Jared’s my brother?”

“Yes.”

“Then it’s incest.”

Jeff laughed and took another slug from the hip flask. “That’s human morality, not ours. We don’t build taboos around our sexuality. What you have with Jared is called love, Jensen. I get that you’ve never experienced it before so it might be difficult for you to recognize it. But that’s what it is. All of us experience that sexual bond with each other when we hit puberty and the change starts to happen, the fire that burns just underneath your skin, but it can be even more powerful between siblings. Your parents had it and so do you and Jared. It’s the worst kind of loneliness to lose something like that, better if you didn’t know it in the first place.”

Jensen pictured that photograph, first him standing on the river bank and staring at the camera empty-handed, and then Jared looking up into a vacant space with an empty expression. Better to be looking away, focused on butterflies or something else off to the side.

“Jared had to watch your dad blame himself and give up on everything after your mom died and we couldn’t find you. I will never forgive him for that, for leaving all of us when we needed him, Jared most of all. Simone doesn’t carry things in the same way. Jesus, I still can’t get over the way Jared just found you like that at the airport. What a perfect fucking coincidence. Do you know what he was waiting for at the airport?”

“Serendipity,” Jensen replied.

Jeff threw his head back and roared with laughter. Wiping his eyes, he nodded. “Fucking exactly. Serendipity. He was there to meet a brother from Dallas who had been following a guy he thought would lead us to Adam. Jared never gave up on the belief that he would find you, that it was just a matter of time. It’s a good thing he has such a head for money and manages your parents’ inheritance so well because he has spent a fortune over the years trying to find you.”

He laughed again and took another slug from the flask. Jeff seemed intent on getting drunk even though most people were only just waking up and drinking their morning coffee.

Jensen thought about Jared searching for him for years and years, never giving up on getting him back. “Is my brother mad at me for running away like that?” he asked, trying out loud that other new word, fascinated by the way it rolled off his tongue as if he owned it.

Jeff smiled. “I doubt it, but why don’t you ask him yourself? He’s in the clearing just on the other side of those trees.” He pointed in the direction that he meant.

“Jared’s here?” Jensen asked, surprised at first, until he remembered a quiet voice soothing him when he felt caged in and that constant, quiet presence running alongside him in the dark.

“Where else would he be? He’s been with you all night, watching out for you. Go and find him. It’s where you belong.”

 _Belong_. That was a new and unfamiliar word too. Like _safe_ and _mother_ and _brother_. New words for a new life that didn’t feel as if it was his own.

Jeff stood up heavily and stubbed out the end of his cigar. “Here endeth the lesson, kiddo. I can hear the siren call of breakfast and Simone’s bed. And I’m getting too drunk for any more words of wisdom. Don’t tell anybody, but it was because I was nervous. Shoes too big for me to fill. Tell Jared I did a good job. Tell him that for his sake, not ours.”

He winked dirtily and said, “I’m looking forward to teaching you lessons that are easier and more fun,” in a rough, sexy drawl, and then turned to walk away and meet Marko, who was waiting for him as if they had secretly signalled each other.

***  
Jared was sitting on a rusting wrought-iron bench in the middle of the clearing. The bench was out of place in this wild, overgrown spot surrounded by a ring of oak and cypress trees garlanded with Spanish moss. He sat very still, hands clasped under his chin, head bowed as if lost deep in thought.

He stiffened when Jensen came into the clearing, obviously aware that he was there, but didn’t look up until Jensen stood in front of him. His expression was cautious and guarded, hard to read. Jensen didn’t want Jared to ever look at him like that so he sank to his knees, loosened Jared’s clenched hands, pulled him down and pressed their mouths together. He cradled Jared’s head, fingers working through his thick hair.

Jared remained motionless and unresponsive for a moment but then made a quiet sound in his throat and softened his lips so that the hard press of their lips started to feel more like a kiss than a harsh and ragged sharing of breath.

Jensen surged up and straddled Jared, pushing him back against the bench. “I’m sorry,” he whispered fiercely against Jared’s mouth.

Jared ran his hands slowly up and down Jensen’s thighs. “What for?”

“For being a disappointment.”

Jared sighed and rested his forehead against Jensen’s. “Don’t be stupid. You could never be a disappointment.”

Wordlessly grateful, Jensen bent his head and kissed Jared’s neck. Jared tightened his grip on Jensen’s thighs. Wanting to get closer to all that warm skin, Jensen pushed his hands up under Jared’s shirt and tried to pull it up.

“No, Jensen, wait. We need to talk.”

“I don’t want to talk,” Jensen mumbled, burying his face in Jared’s neck and tilting his hips forward.

Jared gripped Jensen’s hips in his big hands and held him still. “There’ll be time for that later. Just hang on a minute, okay?”

Jensen pursed his lips and made a disgruntled sound but did as he was told, sitting quietly on Jared’s lap, waiting.

“Are you okay?”

“Am I okay? Besides this kind of insistent hard-on, Jared, I’m fine.”

Maybe Jeff was right about the change. Starving, horny and ready to take on anything actually seemed to pretty much cover it.

An amused grin dispersed the seriousness of Jared’s expression. “Stop acting like a sulky, horny teenager. You’re supposed to be the oldest.”

“That might be true, but according to Jeff, I’ve been unnaturally kept in an infantile state. I’m entitled.” Jensen rubbed his thumb against Jared’s nipple through his t-shirt.

Jared took hold of his hand. “Wait, I need to talk to you. That girl at the bar, Jensen. We can’t be like that with people.”

“I know. It’s why my f— It’s why he was always so intolerant of anything sexual, right?”

“It’s dangerous for us and for them. It makes us shift and it’s hard, if not impossible, to transform back into our human selves. Some of us have been lost like that and trapped forever.”

Jensen shuddered at the thought. “I didn’t mean for it to happen.” He stroked Jared’s nipple again, but unconsciously this time, thinking before he spoke. “Why did you get Jeff to talk to me? Why wasn’t it you?”

Jared turned his head away, staring into the distance. “It’s difficult for me. Simone gives me a hard time because she wants to talk and I can’t. And I didn’t handle things very well. I thought it might be better coming from Jeff. I pictured everything so differently. You have no idea how many times I’ve imagined what it was going to be like when I found you. I lied to you because I thought it made sense to wait until after the change to explain everything. But then you left like that and I got scared. I don’t want you to think that I’m like Adam, lying and controlling and trying to manipulate you.”

Jensen placed his hand gently against Jared’s cheek and turned his head to face him. “I don’t think that. I was freaked out, that’s all.”

Jared looked up at him and Jensen tried to communicate how much he meant what he’d said through his expression.

“Okay,” Jared said quietly.

“It wasn’t a dream, was it? Me and you and…” Jensen trailed off, vivid flashes of that night appearing in his imagination, heat pooling in his groin and warming his cheeks. He grinned suddenly, remembering something, “You know, I actually thought about becoming a vegetarian briefly when I was younger, partly as a rebellion against my— against him, but I never had the guts.”

Jared threw his head back and laughed. “Wait until we go deer hunting together.” He laughed again at Jensen’s expression of horrified fascination. His smile faded and he started tracing slow circles with his thumbs against Jensen’s hipbones. “None of it was a dream.” His gaze became heavy and hooded. Jensen’s heart rate picked up.

Jared started to stand, pushing Jensen off him. “Come on. The things I want to do to you require a bed. Maybe a hot bath first. I’m stiff and sore and dirty from sleeping out all night.” He leaned forward and sniffed Jensen’s neck. “And you smell.” He breathed deeply and then nuzzled Jensen affectionately. “All feral and sweaty.”

He licked Jensen’s beating pulse, the scrape of his teeth a sharp promise against Jensen’s skin. “Not that I don’t like you wild and dirty,” he growled.

Jensen’s breathing quickened. “Okay,” he said shakily. Baths and beds (and Jared naked in both) sounded like heaven.

Jared pulled away reluctantly. “You know Simone’s going to kick your ass for running away like that, right?”

“She can try.”

Jared laughed and Jensen decided that it might just be his favorite sight. His brother, head thrown back, expression amused and unguarded.

“Some things never change. The two of you were always butting heads when we were little.”

“I think I remember that,” Jensen said quietly.

Jared smiled and took Jensen’s hand. “Come on, let’s go home.”

 _Home_. Another new word for Jensen’s new life.


End file.
